1
25
165
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/981/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-010001.jpg
16a295216463102887bade943a07f798
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/981/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-010002.jpg
69cfbb04fa70258d4f040f29bef3394e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/981/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-010003.jpg
139557e1bc4558b4aff8314de87bb150
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/981/EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-010004.jpg
7e1ae861eccf1d5606b65e7687e70743
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Edwards, Ellis
E D Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection concerns Sergeant Ellis Drury Edwards (1236492 Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook, memorial booklet and four letters. Ellis Edwards was a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Lakenheath. He was killed when his Halifax crashed on an operation to Berlin 30 March 1943. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pauline Harkett and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Ellis Edwards is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/208271/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Edwards, ED
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Sgts Mess.
Stradishall.
Sunday
My dear Maggie
No doubt by now you are calling me all the names under the sun for not writing before, but I suppose by now you know me well enough to realise how very [underlined] good [/underlined] I am at letter writing
Well firstly thanks for the parcel which I got quite safely. and thanks for putting in my photo, good job it didn’t print too well what do you say it was really a terrible effort. Well you say you are busy well so am I. I was up in Yorkshire for 4 days last week took a plane & two passengers up to Doncaster & spent two whole days there and had a
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
very good time, since coming back have been down for early flying, so that means getting up at 6 o/clock
So with that & flying you can guess that bed called very early in the evening today we flew all morning & this afternoon we had a Trial football Match to pick out the better team to play the regular station team on Xmas Day. Well our side won 3 – 2 I scored one goal What do you think about that? So I don’t know if we will be playing Xmas day or not yet I cannot imagine it is Sunday here each day is the same we work all day & every day now we are flying
[page break]
[underlined 3 [/underlined]
but as yet have done no night flying here. How long will you get at Xmas we of course get none officially so it remains with the CO whether we fly or not on Xmas day I hope we don’t there will be some moans & groans if we do, because I guess most of the crowd will have had more than one over the eight. We are so isolated here, miles away from anywhere & cannot do any shopping so don’t be surprised if you don’t get a card at Xmas. I know you will understand.
Well I think that is all for now so will finish off now
[page break]
4
& toddle down to post with it so that it can get off at 6 o clock [sic] tomorrow morning, also I shall have to go & see if I am on early flying in the morning & if so get the Guard room to give me a shake or otherwise I shall be here in bed all day because now after my first game of football for 3 years I feel as if I had been kicked all over & my eyes are refusing to stay open
So cheerio, tell Dad I write him tomorrow, kind regards to Jim & Bertha
So Thanks again
Your loving brother
Ellis
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to his sister from Ellis Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Apologizes for not writing and relates daily goings on at RAF Stradishall. Mentions a visit to Doncaster, having to get up early for flying almost every day, a football match, not night flying yet and the fact that they are very isolated.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ellis Edwards
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Four handwritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EEdwardsEDEdwardsM[Date]-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Doncaster
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-12
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dianne Kinsella
Sally Des Forges
Emily Jennings
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Stradishall
sport
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/107/1442/LGrayHM184299v1.2.pdf
29b880f1891e664a5308afa8e355cdcd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Gray, Herbert
H M Gray
Bertie Gray
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. The collection relates to the career of Sergeant Herbert M Gray (1593562 Royal Air Force), It contains his log book, three photographs, a handwritten account of his first flight, six letters he wrote to his wife between 28 June 1944 and 6 August 1944, and his medal ribbons. Herbert Gray was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron at RAF Elsham Wolds.
The collection was donated by his daughter Ann M Gregory and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gray, HM
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Herbert Gray's navigator's, air bomber's and air gunner's flying log book
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
France--Normandy
France--Blaye
France--Caen
France--Creil
France--Dijon
France--Falaise
France--Flers-de-l'Orne
France--Le Havre
France--Mimoyecques
France--Paris
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Saarbrücken
Netherlands--Middelburg
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Domléger-Longvillers
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator's, air bomber's and air gunner's flying log book for Sergeant Herbert Gray from 21 February 1944 to 10 November 1945. Detailing training and operations flown. Served at RAF Stradishall, RAF Hemswell and RAF Elsham Wolds. Aircraft flown were Lancaster and Stirling. He carried out a total of 30 night time and daylight operations as a flight engineer with 103 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds on the following targets in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands: Aachen, Aul Noye, Blaye, Bordeaux, Caen, Cahagnes, Dijon, Domleger, Dortmund, Duisburg, Falaise, Flers, Fontaine le Pin, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Kiel, Le Culot, Le Havre, Mimoyecques, Neuss, Paris, Rieme Ertveld (Ghent-Terneuzen Canal), Saarbrücken, Sannerville, Trossy St Maximin, Westkapelle. His pilot on operations was Squadron LEader Van Rolleghem.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGrayHM184299v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-17
1944-06-18
1944-06-22
1944-06-24
1944-06-29
1944-07-01
1944-07-05
1944-07-06
1944-07-07
1944-07-18
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-09-05
1944-09-08
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-23
1944-09-24
1944-10-03
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-06-25
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
103 Squadron
1657 HCU
49 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Hemswell
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-3
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/159/1992/LParkinsH1891679v1.2.pdf
276900754f39dfa9ed3aa80a655cd108
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Parkins, Harry
H W Parkins
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Harry Parkins (891679 Royal Air Force), his logbook, identity card and one photograph. Harry Parkins was a flight engineer with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron and flew 30 night time and 17 daylight operations from RAF Fiskerton and RAF East Kirkby.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Parkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Harry Parkins' flight engineer log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LParkinsH1891679v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Kortrijk
Belgium--Leopoldsburg
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
France--Mimoyecques
France--Grandcamp-Maisy
France--Creil
France--Amiens
France--Annecy
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
France--Caen
France--Chalindrey
France--Châtellerault
France--Donges
France--Étampes (Essonne)
France--Givors
France--Joigny
France--Nevers
France--Paris
France--Pommeréval
France--Saumur
France--Tours
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Munich
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wesseling
Germany
France
Belgium
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-05-09
1944-05-10
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-04
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-10
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-21
1944-06-22
1944-06-24
1944-06-25
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-12
1944-07-13
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-27
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-07-31
1944-08-03
1944-08-05
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1945-04-18
1945-04-22
1945-04-25
1945-04-29
1945-04-30
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-05
1945-05-11
1945-05-26
1945-09-12
1945-09-29
1945-10-01
1945-10-10
Description
An account of the resource
The log book covers the training and operational career Sergeant Harry Parkins from 20 December 1943 to March 1954. He flew in Stirling, Lancaster, Anson, C-47, Lancastrian, Valetta, Lincoln. Harry Parkins flew 47 operations - 30 night operations and 17 daylight operations - with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron, including six for operation Manna, plus five for operation Dodge. Includes details on bombing on targets in France, Germany and Belgium: Paris-Juvisy, Paris-La Chapelle, Brunswick, Munich, Annecy. Burg Leopold, Amiens, Kiel, Antwerp, St Valery, Saumer, Maisy, Caen, Balleroy, Etampes, Beauvoir, Wesseling, Pommereval, Mimoyecques, Chalindrey, Nevers, Thiverny, Courtrai, Donges, Givors, Stuttgart, Cahagnes, Joigny, Trossy St Maximin, St Leu, Chattellerault. His pilots on operations were Pilot Officer Jackson, Flying Officer Lennon and Pilot Officer Fry.
148 Squadron
1657 HCU
199 Squadron
50 Squadron
576 Squadron
630 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
bombing of the Juvisy, Noisy-le-Sec and Le Bourget railways (18/19 April 1944)
bombing of the Pas de Calais V-1 sites (24/25 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lincoln
mid-air collision
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Scampton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Stradishall
RAF Sturgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
V-3
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/163/2063/PBanksP15020053.1.jpg
f32be18fc1813b852c782163cece9349
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Banks, Peter. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains a varied collection of photographs taken whilst based at RAF Feltwell from 1937 onwards. There are aerial views of Windsor and Buckingham Palace, Harrow aircraft, plus social and service events. Post-war he was transferred to Singapore via India and Burma. The album reflects his social life with occasional photograph of his service activities at RAF Seletar. His return to UK via Bombay at the time of Indian independence is recorded, followed by scenic shots round Wick in Scotland. Finally there are some photographs of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. It also contains pages from newspapers dated 18 and 19 June 1940. <br /><br />Return to the <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/140">main collection</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photograph album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP1501
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
12 airmen at RAF Stradishall and 20 airmen at a Man Management Course
Description
An account of the resource
The first is a group of 12 men arranged in two rows in front of a building. Captioned 'Attachement (sic) to R.A.F. Stradishall for disastrous daylight raid by "Stirling" a/c'.
The second is a group of 20 airmen arranged in three rows in front of a wooden building. Captioned '28 day man management course 1945
Top- McGregor, Pricket, Reeves, Mayson, Tucker
Middle - Crawford, Self, Clarke, Lewis, Shea, Cunningham, Wheeler
Bottom - Hookem, Bartells, Horner, Smith,Healy, Bently, Thorn, Robins, Inst'.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two b/w photographs mounted on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP15020053
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
RAF Stradishall
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/163/2096/PBanksP15020087.2.jpg
62f7fdc09b10fe6cbbfc4eaf567a6f54
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Banks, Peter. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
The album contains a varied collection of photographs taken whilst based at RAF Feltwell from 1937 onwards. There are aerial views of Windsor and Buckingham Palace, Harrow aircraft, plus social and service events. Post-war he was transferred to Singapore via India and Burma. The album reflects his social life with occasional photograph of his service activities at RAF Seletar. His return to UK via Bombay at the time of Indian independence is recorded, followed by scenic shots round Wick in Scotland. Finally there are some photographs of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. It also contains pages from newspapers dated 18 and 19 June 1940. <br /><br />Return to the <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/140">main collection</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One photograph album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP1501
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Airmen in the Mess
Description
An account of the resource
Photographs 1,2 and 3 are groups of airmen sitting and drinking. Captioned 'W/O Brixton Serenades Cpl's (ex RAF Stradishall Photo' section.) The only colour process failure at Feltwell due to his staff open colour marker film to light when unloaded after exposure over Germany. So your [sic] F/Sgt Banks Eh! (our first meeting was at Singapore, became great friends)'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three b/w photographs mounted on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PBanksP15020087
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
mess
RAF Stradishall
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3382/PCooperS1501.2.jpg
2a23a039a4e935255b71c83868fe4af0
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Title
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Cooper, Sydney Foster
Sydney Foster Cooper
Sydney F Cooper
Sydney Cooper
Syd Cooper
S F Cooper
S Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. Two oral history interviews with Sydney Foster "Syd" Cooper (b. 1921, 1528331 Royal Air Force), photographs and other items.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-25
2015-10-28
2017-09-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cooper, SF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre. I am with Sidney Cooper at his home in Pointon near Manchester and it is the 27th of October. Sid, if you can just tell me a little bit where you were born and ‒.
SC: I was born in Blackpool.
GR: Born in Blackpool.
SC: Born in Blackpool 15th‒, 15th of October I921. I’ve always been a worker. I started work when I was ten. We used to go in singing halls. And in those days people used to walk down the prom singing away, you know, mill girls and that. And they come to us and said, ‘Hey, you lads, do you know “When the love birds leave their nest?”’ So I says, ‘Yeah, we know that’. So they said, ‘Can you sing it for us?’ So me and Metcalf (pal of mine) we sang it. Yeah, right. ‘Can you stand there?’ ‘Yes’. People walking by, looked in, seen those kids singing and after we’d got a few people there we’d buzz off. They’d give us tuppence and then we’d go to another one, and we did that.
GR: And that was at ten years old.
SC: Oh yeah, I’ve done all sorts of ‒. I’ve sold black puddings on Blackpool Prom for threepence apiece and gone to Chester, run errands for stallholders and this that and other. It was a past time of mine and er, I did that oh ‘til I was fourteen.
GR: Brothers and sisters?
SC: Brothers and sisters, yes. I had two sisters and ‒, two sisters and four boys, and our Jack ‒, he’s here somewhere, here he is, there’s me brother. He joined ‒, he joined, the bloody Fleet Air Arm.
GR: Was you the oldest or youngest?
SC: I’m the eldest boy.
GR: You’re the eldest boy, yeah.
SC: He’s three years younger than me or two years younger than me. He went in the Fleet Air Arm.
GR: He went in the Fleet Air Arm. So that was in Blackpool?
SC: So I tried to get in the Air Force when I was about twelve or fourteen and wrote to them and they sent me a form back to fill in. I filled it in to the best of my abilities and sent it off and they wouldn’t accept me. I wasn’t of the accepted standard required by the RAF. I only weighed about four stone, four or five stone and small, and so I never get in, but I got my own back and joined up and became an engineer.
GR: So you tried to join the RAF, what when you were, what, fourteen years old?
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GR: Which was a bit young.
SC: Yeah, yeah, well you see, because I wanted to go in as an apprentice, you see, and they’d go to school. They’d march down with a piped band, and walk back with a piped band all the time. I knew quite a bit about it, you know, found out about things but anyway it wasn’t to be.
GR: So you were turned down initially.
SC: Oh yeah, turned down. Well after that ‒ [unclear].
GR: Right so when was that? How did that happen?
SC: That was 1941. 1941 I joined the Air Force.
GR: And they sent you for training?
GR: Sent me for training as a flight engineer, which I passed and came away with a first class and went to er, ‒, posted to Blackpool. That’s where I come from. And you’re posted in The Progress Hotel. I thought, ‘I know her, I know her, I know the owner’. It’s just gone out of my bloody mind now, I thought ‘Smashing!’ I walked in there, walked in there, bloody queer you know. Holmes, Mrs Holmes. Bloody place, we were just in one room, just beds, nothing else. Electric light, yes. Heating, no. And this was 1941, Christmas. So, anyway, I was posted ‒. I was going on to 256 Squadron then at Squires Gate, which I knew, and we had to walk there and have meals, and then walk right across the airport to where we were. I had A for alpha er, to look after from a flight engineer’s, from an engineer’s point of view
GR: So you were a fitter engineer.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I never had a fly in one. There was an accident there with a Blackburn Botha, Blackburn Botha, and a flood and one of our aircraft, it was a Defiant, Defiant and that was a bad aircraft and over Central Station it crashed, but of course I didn’t know much about it because I was in the Air Force at the time. Anyway, I left there ‒.
GR: Just going back, 256 Squadron where you was an engineer fitter. Was it Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Hurricanes and Defiants?
SC: That’s right, yeah.
GR: And what did that encompass? Was you an engine fitter?
SC: Engine fitter. Yes. Engine fitter and, of course, they had the same engines in them anyway. And I got posted then to Stradishall and there was no aircraft there or anything. We were waiting for it to commence and I was on Air Speed Oxfords ‒,
GR: Still as a fitter?
SC: Oh yeah, yeah and sort them. Oh, Stradishall was a queer place. There was 214 Squadron were there on Wellingtons and er ‒.
GR: Stirlings I think?
SC: Stirlings, yes there were, 3 Group and oh, I don’t know who I was with but there was another squadron on the station, 138 Squadron. They had Whitleys.
GR: Sid’s putting his fingers to be silent. I think 138 was a special duties squadron.
SC: They had Whitleys, Manchesters and ‒, oh, it’s just gone out of my head, and you know ‒.
GR: You said Manchesters. Halifax, Stirlings?
SC: No, no, no.
GR: Lysanders?
SC: Lysanders, Westland Lysanders [emphasis]. They had Whitleys and Lysanders and er, I have seen people [unclear] taking secret people to France. I see them get up the rope. Anyway, there was one incident that I saw, a Stirling, sorry a Lysander, skid and go in the back of a wagon, just pulled the canvas off, nobody hurt, nobody killed, but we went when it was terrible weather, terrible weather. We didn’t have an aircraft at all but we were employed clearing the runways. My address was number 35, Married Quarters, an empty, empty house. There was nothing there, just three beds in there, no lockers, anything at all, just three beds then usual blankets for to cover us, two blankets apiece, and in the morning we had to get out there, no fire, no hot water and we got all wet through. We had to put our wet trousers on and go out again ‘cause there was nowhere to dry ‘em. Anyway, there was no flying for about eight days it was that bad, 1942 this and ‒, I’m trying to think of where ‒. Oh, I was keen, as I say, always after the money, so I heard they were forming the RAF Regiment so I jumped down and wanted to join the RAF Regiment. They says, ‘Who are yer?’ I says ‘I’m here, I’m there’, anyway he says, ‘You can’t’. You see, because in the Air Force there was six groups of money.
GR: That’s right.
SC: All the people could be of the same rank but all on different money dependent on training. There was group one engineers, group two, group three, group four, group five, and six was ‘M’ [unclear] medical . You can only re-muster upwards and you’re at the top and there’s nowhere you could go. So I says ‘Oh, right, so’.
GR: Probably, as an engineer fitter you was more needed as that.
SC: That was the best job they had in the RAF for people of my age. Anyway, I decided I’d go in as a flight engineer.
GR: So you volunteered for aircrew.
SC: Yes, volunteered for air crew. So they says, ‘Yes, medical, this, that and the other, yes. You’re just the type we want’, so I went as aircrew.
GR: ‘Cause I believe in 1942 as Bomber Command was moving into four engine bombers ‒
SC: That’s right.
GR: Stirlings, Lancs, Hallifax.
SC: Exactly.
GR: So, the extra crew member they needed was the flight engineer.
SC: And a gunner, mid upper gunner.
GR: With your background obviously ‒. So did you do training then? More training?
SC: This will amuse you. Jack Campbell [?], he joined together with me. We even started school together he and I. He joined, he was going as a gunner, wireless operator air gunner, WOP AGs they called them. So of course, being volunteers we were tested, you weren’t tested if you were brought, you was summoned in, so we went into a little room, not much bigger than my lounge and there was queues in there so we go in the queues and was given a bible apiece, a bible apiece, so we were there he recited something and we’d repeat it you know, obeying all the laws and kings and queens and that bloody rubbish. So, we said, ‘Yes, so where’s this bloody shilling coming in?’ The King’s shilling I’d heard of, anyway we came out of there with no shilling. Well, I thought he’s had about 50 shillings that should have been ours, or not. But apparently it’s a myth I think [unclear]. So, that was it. Anyway, so I was in, so I went from there to er, I’ll go and try and find it the name ‒ but it was the head place, the main headquarters, where the boy entrants were and all that ‒ .
GR: Alton?
SC: Alton. Correct, correct. We went there to new entrant headquarters. We were there for a fortnight. Of course, we were hierarchy you see, so that was fair enough, altogether we were off on our way, marched up, and they decided so many people, and we all got a corporal in charge of us and we went to Cardiff, yes Cardiff. ‘Where we going now?’ Goes up the road, another train, we end up in Llanelly, I don’t know, it was always called ‘Slash’ to airmen. We went to Number 1 SDF air crew training, gunnery school, Pembray and that’s me at Pembray. You can see me, the good looking one.
GP: We’re just looking at the photograph of the good looking one on the front row?
SC: Yeah, and he was the instructor, Flight Sergeant Marley.
GR: RAF Rembray, Number 1 Air Gunnery School
SC: That’s right.
GR: January 1943. Wonderful photograph.
SC: Yeah, right. So then came the good news in the morning. He said ‘You lads go out and enjoy yourselves’. Out we went, you see, we’d just arrived, come back, then in the morning we were told what we were going to do. We were under this gentleman. He says, ‘Well this is a very interesting course that you’re going on and of course you’re going to learn a lot. And that’s the good news. Now the bad news, you are not allowed out all week’. Couldn’t get out of the camp, couldn’t go for a drive, so we started about half past eight in the morning to about eight o’clock at night learning about these guns, trying to fit a nice [unclear] on ball turret , different things and armour piercing bullets, and tracer bullets and Christ knows what. Anyway we learned about them SGO Vickers gas operated guns, Tommy guns and oh we left there, all of us one morning, we’re off again. This is after about eight days. We got on this train and went to Cardiff, to Cardiff and then we went from Cardiff to ‒.
GR: It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember.
SC: Gillston, Gillston, all off there and then we were marched to St Athan.
GR: St Athan.
SC: That was a big place and we went there and we, of course, were greeted as we usually were with ‘Who are you? We didn’t know you were coming’. [Laughs]. Anyway, we went in the airmen, went in the airmen’s mess and got bedded down and the next morning we were all marched together, there’s more than this, this was just part of it, and righto, fall out, fall out there and he said ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so’ calling out our last three hundred names, ‘All here’, and ‘So-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so go they were there.’ So, they say right, ‘You are training to be a flight engineer on Halifaxes. You are going on Lancasters and you’re going on the big ones.’ Well the big ones was like going up in the air, like going up a mountain. So we were trained on Halifaxes and, so anyway, after we finished the course, passed out, in a puffer train again and we went to er ‒ oh I don’t know what they called it? Went somewhere to a con unit.
GR: Heavy conversion unit.
SC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, heavy conversion unit and this was in Yorkshire, anyway went there, and we were going to be crewed up there. The crewing is remarkable because this ‒ the crews which were there, they’d come off Wellingtons you see, of course they’re only a five man crew. They want a rear gunner and engineer and you mixed among yourselves and you sort yourselves out.
GR: And you’re in a big room.
SC: Yeah, well it’s nice. You go for a drink, this, that and another and they say, I suppose, ‘Well, he’s not so bad is he?’ you know and that’s how you crewed up. You’re not detailed. So, you’re going in with welcome arms. So, we joined, we joined up with this lot. [Background noise]. Oh, you’ve got that. I was trying to remember their names. That’s the crew that I was with.
GR: So, this is 427 Squadron.
SC: Yeah, that’s right.
GR: And the pilot, Sergeant Hank Henry.
SC: Aye, Henry, Hank Henry.
GR: Hank Henry and he was with the Royal Canadian Air Force and so were two of the other crew members.
SC: Yeah, that’s right but one, the navigator was a foreign officer.
GR: Yes.
SC: In the Canadian Air Force. Anyway, and there was no rubbish. Everyone was the same, you know, when we were out, on board, and so ‒
GR: And so was this the summer of 1943 or ‒
SC: No, winter ’43, early.
GR: Early winter 1943.
SC: Early ‘43.
GR: You crewed up at 427 Squadron.
SC: Yes, you see, they’d been on Wellingtons. They’d already got some ops in so we went over to er ‒ and we were taken to er, Leeming.
GR: Leeming.
SC: Leeming in Yorkshire. Well, that was 6 Group. That was the first group being formed with Canadians, so it was Canadian governed from start to finish and that was OK. So we did a few ops there. I can’t remember how many, about twelve, something like that.
GR: Can you remember your first operation that you flew on?
SC: Yeah, Bochum, yeah, I’ll never forget that, Bochum, and the navigator says to me, ‘This is where we’re going’ and oh I was dead keen, you know, up for it, dead keen, and Christ it looked as if you could put your hand in it, for flak. I thought, ‘ This is good’. Anyway ‒
GR: So, just before the first operation you had your briefing. Was you frightened? Was you looking forward to it? Or did you just take it in your stride?
SC: Well, well, I mean I didn’t know anything about it. You know, it was all completely new to you. We did a few cross countries, high and low tests, and one thing and another but we were all keen on things you see. No, well, a Halifax is a difficult, I hasten to add, ‘cause there’s twelve tanks, six in each main plane and ‒
GR: And they’re your responsibility.
SC: Oh yeah, well we had good, good skins. I mean you didn’t ask anything, I just said to Hank, I said, ‘I’m just going to switch over’, ‘Aye, OK’, he said, you see. So, anyway ‒.
GR: Did it make you feel a bit easier when you did your first operation that some of the other crew had already done ops?
SC: Well, well, yeah, I mean, you know, they were old hands, you know. Well, they were very, very, very good, you know, we got on marvellous. And people say to me, ‘Well, what did the bomb aimer do? And I’d say, ‘I don’t know’. Well, I was that busy myself ‘cause I got a panel there with all the instruments that the pilot had and I’m watching them for pressure, pressure, temperature and this, that and the other. Very, very keen ‒ and I had [unclear]
GR: Careful with your chair Sid, you’re about to go over some of your photos. Now, that’s alright, leave it there. So, Bochum was a bad one, the first one, lots of flak.
SC: Pardon? Well, yeah, well, I mean there’s not much difference to them but I mean before that I’d had nothing to compare it with. Because I remember one ‒, one place I think ‒, and I’ve got a bad memory, I think it was Wuppertal we went to. We went up there and I’d been looking through the little dome that I had, little dome, and ‘Christ there’s something coming towards us!’ And I just says, ‘Duck!’ and we went under it and it went over and this was absolutely forbidden to go over the target the wrong way, so we’d gone over and you should go right round and have another go but er, anyway, we managed that and we got on very well, very well, anyway it had become probably September, September, September they formed 427 Squadron at Leeming. They were all Canadian there and they decided, the powers that be, decided to form another squadron, namely 514 Squadron, 3 Group. 514 Squadron 3 Group and of course they were getting short, well I hadn’t been told but it appeared that they were getting short of technical staff ‘cause they had nothing, just can’t get them. [unclear]. So ‒, so we went there and it was a place called Foulsham, went to this place.
GR: So is that your whole crew?
SC: No, no just me.
GR: Just you.
SC: Just me. Engineer. So, I finished me flying, I hadn’t done a tour but they decided because where’d they get all the fitters from? See, you know, you need what? One hundred and fifty or two hundred men of different types. So anyway we goes there and they didn’t have an aircraft, they hadn’t even got an aircraft but they were forming the people. I’d overstepped it. Who should ‒, who should be the only sergeant? But Giles, who I knew at Stradishall. He was bent and he was a corporal. He had an accident where he got a screwdriver in his eye, lost his eye, and requested he stopped in the Air Force and he stopped on in the Air force until he was demobbed in ‘46 and he died when he was about 96 or 98. I used to go and see him.
GR: How did you feel about going from ground crew down to obviously air crew and back down to ground crew again?
SC: Yeah, well, I was promoted to Sergeant as a tradesman.
GR: But did you not want to keep on flying?
SC: Well, well not really. It was a relief to some extent but I missed the camaraderie that existed. It was absolutely marvellous. There was one occasion and I forget where we were going, on ops and my ‒, say this is the aircraft, my seat was here, here’s the bulkhead with my instruments on, well I couldn’t see ‘em from there, so I got my parachute and I used to sit on it, sit on this parachute and underneath was a lot of oxygen bottles, yep, and I could look up at them like this or stand up. Anyway, on one occasion I’m going to the back, going to the toilet actually, going to the back there and I grabbed my parachute. The parachute was what they called the observer type that you clipped on. The pilot sat on his, that was the pilot’s parachute. Get this, I picked up the wrong handle, I got the metal handle. [whooshing noise] bloody parachute right down to the bottom before you could say ‒, bottom of the aircraft.
GR: So, the parachute exploded in the plane?
SC: Oh, aye, well, it’s held together with bungee cables, you know, [unclear] there’s no explosion down there. When I was there the other side of it was the wireless operator and I says ‘Christ, that’s me, if we’re in trouble that’s me’. He said, ‘It won’t make much difference, if it comes to it we’ll go together you and me’, and you know I nearly bloody cried when he said that, and I believe him. People, [coughs] pardon me, if we’re talking people many think I’m telling lies but I’m not, I was really upset, and I was crying with pleasure because I know [unclear] he would, I’m bloody certain he would. So, anyway that was one unfortunate bloody thing that happened.
GR: So you are now with 514 Squadron? Obviously back to being a fitter, a fitter engineer.
SC: Yes, yes, then we were receiving aircraft to make the squadron up you see and give them what they called an acceptance examination. You can’t just use it and some required some modifications, you don’t hold the system up because they put it in a different flare chute in, you have to put it in when you get to mace [?]. So we formed up and then in December 1943 this is, December 1943. The last operation they did, I forget where it was, but they went to ‒, went from Foulsham and landed at Waterbeach, which was new station, nicely built place etcetera was there, so we were there ‒, I think over ‒, I think it was the second Christmas we had the misfortune on sea [?] flight. They say that a bomb dropped off an aircraft and there was about twenty three killed, killed on sea [?] flight, but well, we don’t know what happened really. Anyone with any information was dead and it was a [unclear]. Mind you it was mixed, a lot of old, er, chaps who were on pension and had been called in you see. And I mixed with people who were much older than me. We’d got Charlie George, Charlie George and Ginger Leadbetter. They’d wouldn’t have nought to do with women. If you went on holiday, and it wasn’t payday, you could go on a casual and take a few quid to go with. So, I was there and Ginger Leadbetter came away, Ginger Leadbetter, aye, and Charlie George says to him ‘Have you got your money?’ These two were old friends. They’d be forty-odd. ‘No’ he says, ‘I haven’t got it’, ‘Well, wouldn’t they give it to you?’ ‘Oh aye’, he says, ’It was a woman!’ So he says, ‘Where?’ He says, ‘The officer, a woman!’ He wouldn’t take the money. [Laughs].
GR: I bet you [emphasis] did.
SC: Oh, I would have done but lots of people didn’t, not because of the women so much, but anyway it was ‒. I really enjoyed myself there, and the CTO, Chief Technical Officer was er, a ‒, oh Christ, smashing bloke. He knew everything that went on. Anyway, the war’s over Christmas 1945, that’s right ‘45, just before Christmas ’45. Only my eldest daughter was born at August towards ‒. I got no leave, not like today. Can’t get [unclear]. So, he says ‘Right, post you to Italy’. Italy, Christ! So, we went to Italy. Well, this was rumoured again, it wasn’t publicised but it’s rumoured and I really want to emphasise this is rumour, that there was a chance of a war breaking out between Yugoslavia and Italy ‘cause Italy was on our side then.
GR: Yes.
SC: They changed, you see, and this was to show force and round about fifteen bombers, Lancasters, used to come out every day, land at Pomigliano, which is Naples, which I was at at that time, or Bari, which is on the Adriatic side, along there, go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I don’t think they [unclear] on there [unclear] in their quarters. ‘Cause we were stable there, we had our own places in which to live, but that’s what happened and there was no bullshit there, nothing, and someone said ‒, you’ll laugh, you won’t believe this but it’s true, ‘A parade in the morning’, a parade [emphasis], ‘Get out’, ‘There is’, and anyway we all formed and don’t forget we got German prisoners of war in tents on camp. Somebody says ‘There’s something going on’, he says, ‘Cause Latchthorne[?] has had a bloody haircut’. He was the [unclear] officer, had a haircut. Anyway, a strike had broken out in the Far East, an RAF strike, and they were frightened it would go right through ‘cause we were, what you’d call, Middle East, Middle East Mediterranean Forces, and that was funny.
GR: How long did you stay in Italy for?
SC: Well, came back from Italy and this will amuse you, come back, I think it would be June when, this is testing my memory, when apparently political things had settled down a bit, we were withdrawn and we came back from there and then ‒
GR: So about June 1946?
SC: Yes, yes,
GR: Came back to the UK?
SC: Yeah, came back. Didn’t know where we’d go. We see all these go backwards and forwards, go back on a train six in a carriage, six senior COs in a carriage, in a compartment, and eight for the others and we’re there and I said, ‘We ain’t gonna get any bloody sleep here’, took us four or five days to get home. So I says, I says, ‘Aye, this is awkward. I’ve sorted it out. What do you reckon?’ So, I says, ‘Right, seats, one man on each. Right, luggage rack, one man on each’, so he says, ‘That’s alright, well ‒’, he says, ‘There’s six of us’, I says, ’Well, I’m coming to that, one fella lies on the floor between the two benches’, he says, ’That’s five ways, what about the last one?’ I says, ’ That’s me. I’m gonna make a bloody hammock over the top with the bloody kit bag ropes’. Of course it was alright for about three quarters of an hour but the rope broke [laughs] and I fell [unclear] so anyway that’s what happened. So we, we, we, eventually got to England across [unclear]. I don’t fancy the water. I says, ’I don’t fancy the weather, the weather’s supposed to be bad.’ So he says, ‘It’s not so bad, it’s alright’. [Unclear] you silly bloody dope. We came back on the very day lots of ships got sank on the race around England. Anyway, we er, managed and then early morning parade, calling names out this, that and the other, well this, that and the other, over there. And he says, ‘Right, you’re going to Church Lawford’. Oh, right. ‘Church Lawford, you’, and I was going to Church Lawford. That was the AFTS, Advanced Flying Training School, with Harvards (American aircraft). Well I knew the bloody engine’s just the same. So Ginger and I went and unfortunately ‒, Ginger, he was a rigger, on air frames on the other side, and we went to this place. Well, in the Air force when you go from station to station to station you have to have an arrival chit and it has to be endorsed by the person to say that they know that you’re here, you see, and there’s about a dozen, at least a dozen places, what with a medical here, there and everywhere. So anyway, different ones. Well of course it takes you some time to go to these people to introduce yourself. Well the first place you go, pay accounts, another payroll, so I goes there and signs in. So we went to the doctors and dentist, goodness knows what. The last one, where’s that? Where you’re gonna work. That’s two days you’ve been doing now. So we goes, and some NCOs seem to have a certain amount of freedom with the officers because quite often they knew more than the bloody officers above your engineers and that. You’d get engineer graduates from college and well they knew nought about aeroplanes. Anyway, goes there and when I was there you could tap on the door and then put your head round and he’d say ‘Come in’, or ‘I’ll send someone out in a minute’, you see, so he had that licence. So Wing Commander Perry (never came across a wing commander before in the engineering, very queer), anyway, him and I stand there outside, smarten up, you know, no answer ‒ . So anyway [laughs], so Ginger says ‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee’. I say, ‘There’s someone in here’. He says ‘There isn’t. There’s nobody in there is there?’ I says, ‘I can hear him writing’. He said, ‘Writing?’ Of course, biros hadn’t been invented. I could hear him scratching, you see, ‘cause I had bloody good ears then, which I haven’t now. I said, ‘There’s somebody in there.’ So, he says, ‘Oh right’. So anyway taps on the door and walks in, stood in front of him, he’s still writing, Ginger is still next to me. This is true to the letter. He says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’?’ He said, ‘No Sir’. So he says, ‘Did you hear me say ‘Come in Sergeant’’, I says ‘No, Sir’. He said, ‘Well f‒ off out then!’ [laughs]. I’d never came across language like that from a bloody wing commander so we bloody goes out. Anyway, we’re in the bloody s‒ here with him. Anyway, a girl comes in, calls in and says ‘Welcome’ and then that and the other. He must have been about forty five years of age, must have been by the looks of him. So anyway, we went over and there was two men that we were relieving. There should have been about five senior NCOs and rumour had it, somehow, it has just dawned on me that one of them, that I relieved, had been a prisoner of war and they still wouldn’t let him go ‘til they’d got a replacement, and they got a bloody replacement and that was me! I never seen him again, he’d gone, but I really enjoyed myself in the Air force to some extent, well to a large extent.
GR: When was you demobbed?
SC: Demobbed on 16th August 1946.
GR: And what did you do next?
SC: Well foolishly I did nothing, just hung about and that. ‘Cause I went to Blackpool, took the wife and kids to Blackpool and then I couldn’t get a job.
GR: Now, you’ve mentioned it, was you married?
SC: Pardon?
GR: Was you married during the war?
SC: Yeah, I was married in 1946, 1946. No, no. no, married in 19‒.
GR: ‘Cause you mentioned your wife a couple of times.
GR: Before the war started?
SC: Oh no, no.
GR: During the war? It doesn’t matter exactly when.
SC: Married in May ‘44, May 1944 ‘cause I wouldn’t get married while I was flying.
GR: While you was flying.
SC: My wife wanted to get married earlier but I wouldn’t, not while I was flying, so we married in the April next year, er, ’44.
GR: So after you’re demobbed, back in Blackpool.
SC: Back in Blackpool. I couldn’t get jobs and that was a terrible place for employment.
GR: Unless you was singing on the pier.
SC: [Laughs] That’s right but my voice had gone so I couldn’t and I got some contacts in Blackpool but it wasn’t to be and I went to Standard Telephones and er, in the model shop, gets out of there, goes back to Blackpool, went to the accounts department. I had a good job there ‘cause there was two of us in my place, a big place was Standard Telephones. Chap next to me, he was first class, he went on holiday, [unclear] I got a lot less. Anyway I must have suited them ‘cause I got a £2 pay rise. They used to come in and put it face down in case anybody had a look. Oh Christ, £2! So I got a job there then. Well, when I was at Church Lawford I was dealing direct with a company where the ‒, a motor company, that was agents, main agents for Pratt and Whitney you see, I’d lend them stuff and they knew me by name. Anyway, ‘course I know [unclear] ‘cause there was no one above me, I was the gaffer, and I left there and joined British Airways, British Airways. My brother said to me, ’Oh, you want to get with British Airways, they’re good in aircraft despatch and that’, because you got to work out the balance before it went in the air. You know when you’re a kid and you’re on a seesaw you’re going one way, ‘hey there, get further back and get so and so’. Well you can’t do that with an aeroplane. It’s got to be balanced before it’s up. You can’t do it once it’s up.
GR: So you joined British Airways as a ‒?
SC: As a clerk, as a clerk on five pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence. And I lost twelve quid. I was bloody annoyed. Anyway I went up and eventually there was a new system coming out and I don’t know how it got about but I became top of Europe, you know, ‘cause I said to my boss, I says, ‘Are you trying to make a bloody fool of me on that bloody thing?’ ‘No, no, no’ he says ‘You must go’. Anyway I came top, and it was only British Airways of course. So I was promoted to the hierarchy and I stayed there until I left when I was sixty, ‘cause my wife was very poorly so I had to leave there. In fact I got a letter here ‒
GR: So you finished your working career with British Airways?
SC: No, I got a letter here to say that one of 427 Squadron had crashed on BA property and they were holding a meeting, I got it here somewhere, the meeting. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the letter they sent me. Because I belonged ‒.
GR: British Airways have dedicated a memorial to 427 Squadron for a crashed aircraft and did you attend the unveiling?
SC: No, well I couldn’t leave the wife and she wasn’t fit to fly so I never went.
Gr: So, I’ll switch off.
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ACooperS151027
PCooperS1501
Title
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Interview with Syd Cooper. One
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:48 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Date
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2015-10-27
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney Cooper was born in Blackpool and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He first served as an engine fitter in Fighter Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 427 Squadron from RAF Leeming. He later served as ground crew with 514 Squadron. On leaving the Royal Air Force in 1946 he worked for Standard Telephones and British Airways.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
427 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
Botha
Defiant
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Foulsham
RAF Leeming
RAF Stradishall
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3383/PCooperS1501.1.jpg
2a23a039a4e935255b71c83868fe4af0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/238/3383/ACooperSF170913.1.mp3
f5ab974b220266502dd18f4c17ee7b44
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cooper, Sydney Foster
Sydney Foster Cooper
Sydney F Cooper
Sydney Cooper
Syd Cooper
S F Cooper
S Cooper
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. Two oral history interviews with Sydney Foster "Syd" Cooper (b. 1921, 1528331 Royal Air Force), photographs and other items.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Syd Cooper and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
2015-10-28
2017-09-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cooper, SF
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SP: So this is Suzanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Syd Foster Cooper today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Syd’s home and it’s the 13th of September 2017. So, Syd do you want to tell me a little about life before the war?
SC: Well, I lived in Blackpool and Blackpool is a peculiar thing, I’ve worked on the Promenade, I’ve sold black puddings for threepence, with mustard on, and I’ve run errands, I’ve demonstrated yo-yos: anything for money. I was money mad. Run errands for people and that was my, that was my life, which I enjoyed and I used give everything to my mother, I never kept any money. But I really enjoyed it, but of course times were hard in those days, you know. People used, mill girls walking arm in arm singing the tunes. You see Trevor MacGoff, a friend of mine, we knew all the tunes when they came out you see, and we went past the singing rooms – there was about four singing rooms in Blackpool – they said, ‘hey do you know Shepherd of the Hills?’ ‘Yeah, aye.’ [Indecipherable] They said ‘can you sing it for us?’ And we’d sing it for ‘em and they’d say aye, they do! And these’d just come out! So they got us to sing, he and I, we’d be about twelve, or ten, and we sang it and we knew all the popular songs immediately they were published, you see. So we said eh, we’ve got some money here so we’d go to one singing room and say do you want any singing? Yeah, aye, and we’d sing a couple of songs, they’d give us tuppence, we’d go to another and do the same and that was anyway that was a way we earned money. Well of course the, we used to go to the air shows of course, at Squires Gate, and we, I don’t know, we joined it of course, there’s a war, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’m doing, and what they were going to do, you see, and some were going in the navy, I’m weren’t going in the navy, I didn’t fancy it – I couldn’t swim anyway - so I lost them during the war. Well I’m working for this, in the Air Force, I’ll go now and this, [whisper] see I’ve forgotten what they called it, it was 1521 BAT Flight, 1521 B A T and this B A T stand for, er, B A, I don’t know, anyway, they had curtains, had to fly by instruments, and one evening, this is just an isolated incident, one evening I was on night flying, would be about half past three in the morning, and an officer came up to me and said ‘where’s this so and so gone?’, I says, ‘he’s gone’, ‘how long’s he been gone’, ‘oh about fifteen minutes’. ‘Right’ - and the wind was ferocious [emphasis]. Of course Blackpool’s always windy, particularly the airport you see, and I’d got a big can of oil with me, and I was taking it to another part that required it, and I’m stood like this, and I was stood like this and he was saying ‘where’s so and so and what are you doing’ and ‘well, I’m finished in the short term’ and the oil was dripping out of the can. Not only was it dripping out of the can, the wind was taking it on to his trousers! [Laugh] Course you see I was only what, twenty and I got the wind up, so that was an incident, I never heard anything but I don’t know whether he ever knew where he got that oil from. Anyway, it was a nice place there and I’ll tell you an incident that is remarkable. There was an aircraft taking off, it had been raining a bit and the main planes were wet, wet, well the whole situation was wet, this was at Stradishall, I’ve just remembered, Stradishall in Suffolk, where the 214 Squadron or 138 Squadron, anyway, Bill come, said ‘I’m going up’, I said ‘are you going up?’, so he said ‘yeah, right’. So the Airspeed Oxford is hand started; you have to wind it up, you see. That’s on, you know, I don’t know whether you know aircraft at all, but on the nacelle, that’s where the engines, on the inside, you get what they call a dzus, that’s D Z U S, turn it a hundred and eighty degrees and flap comes up revealing place where you can put your starting handle. So I was doing this, this was on the port side. Anyway, I’m winding this, got it going, got the starboard going and said ‘you’re all right now’ and he throttled back, in the car, and pointing, so I looked and the flap had come up from where the starting handle goes in, enters. Oh Christ, so I go come back, you know, to lower your engine speed, you see, they’re not much, the, not automatic, someone at the front door, post, mail [pause] yeah, [door closing] so I tried you see, they couldn’t make the engine, no air coming, you see, because they weren’t variable propellers, they were just ordinary wooden propellers, so it was still a draught coming apart from the elements and so I tried to get up there. [Chuckle] I went up there and my feet come from under me - it was only a little to get to help you and anyway I stood right back until my calves were touching the leading edge of the tail plane and I ran right and I got to the top and I just get at the top and my bloody feet come from under me, over the top I went and the engines are running and I fell on the ground. There’s only a little distance between the rotating propellers and the leading edge, but anyway I was all right, and he was like this - the pilot - like that with his eyes, but I’ll never forget that, I’ll never forget that. I don’t think he will either! Anyway so, I left there, what did I do? Oh yeah. [Pause] Right, think it, trying to think what I, where I went after that. Oh, I was, that’s at Stradishall, righto, so I thought right I’m not stopping here, I’d gone to the top of me tree, so I’m going in for a flight engineer, that’ll be my bloody thing. So I went in to be a flight engineer; flight engineer I became, and I did pretty well on it and er, [whisper] and it was something new you see, there were very few flight engineers and it was the, went, had to go somewhere for stock, for stores procedure and all sorts of things that really wouldn’t be there, but anyway, we left there and went to er, to Cardiff and went to a place, Brays in Wales, and it's the Number 1 Gunnery School in Wales, and we had to, on an air gunner’s course. We arrived at Pembrey and went to, there’s a place, I don’t know the town but it was locally known by the blokes as Slash, we went there and had a few drinks and went in, next morning we paraded. ‘Well gentlemen you know this is going to be a very concentrated course, you’ve got to be full gunners when you leave here and it will last about eight to ten days. We’ve got a cinema here but there’s just one thing that well, you won’t be pleasant about and that is that you’re not allowed out, you cannot go out of the airport at all’ [emphasis]. So I said, so we started there about nine o’clock in the morning and sometimes we were still doing something at nine o’clock at night, and going on the beach and firing, firing different guns. See we had, we did really a condensed air gunner’s course, which we weren’t too bloomin’ happy. So, anyway we left there, oh, and my memory, we had to pass a course of aircraft identification, you see, because you don’t want to shoot anyone that’s your friend, [chuckle] and some aircraft are quite similar to the British aircraft and little bits of things that you recognise, so, I was bad on them so the chap said ‘well I’m going to cough every time it’s English, so come on’ [cough] English, friend, friend. Anyway we passed there and we came out and we went, went on the train and ended up in Yorkshire, that’s right. No, no, no, we didn’t, no, we went to er, there used to be, is there, huge place, Christ. We got off and marched up to this airport in Wales, and of course it was the training ground for flight engineers, and we marched in and anyway, in the morning we were got together and we were dictated which we were going to be: Lancaster, Halifax or, the English one, the big one, yeah, or Stirlings, and we didn’t have any option, we were told, and I was going on them. Anyway, that was fair enough and I did very well on that, I think. And so we were nominated, we were then flight engineers, right, see, and people were busy sewing sergeant’s stripes on and brevets; brevets were scarce was the flight engineers, I don’t think they got to making many of them but however we, whatever we would do and we went our different ways and we arrived in Yorkshire, and I can’t remember the name of the airport but it was a Con Unit - that’s a Conversion Unit - and along came some people we were just learners for the flight engineer’s point of view we knew all about the aircraft, or at least we thought we did, well we did, we came in, and it was some Canadians and they’d been on Wellingtons which only have a crew of five, now they need a crew of seven: an extra gunner and a flight engineer. And they did something which I think was very, very good, in as much as we went up with various people, you know, and we were, they were watching us do the job and that, you see, and they were converting from Wellingtons to the big aircraft. Well, we’d been there about five days and a chap came up to me - I knew him because I’d been flying with him – and he said ‘Syd’, he says, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to take this’ he says, ‘but we’ve been watching different people that we’ve met, people that with whom we’ve flown and it’s been unanimous: we want you to be our flight engineer.’ Well, [indecipherable] Christ, you know, yeah, and so I became their flight engineer. We’re there, we went up one day, we come down and we crashed, not badly, just undercarriage come away, and went to the doctor’s, went to the hospital straight away, nothing wrong with us so we got in, got up, went up in another aeroplane, anyway we did our Con Unit business there and I was directed to go to, well the number that were there, went to Leeming, Leeming in Yorkshire, and they were forming, then, 6 Group, because they hadn’t got their own Air Force on then, and so we were, 427 Squadron, was the first of the 6 Group, Canadians, and I flew with them. Well, and we had some fun, fun there. The first time we went I was a busy bee. You see you can have nothing to do but you can make yourself work, when you’re flying, you go and say how do to somebody and this that and the other, and that’s quite all right. Well, on the, I used to stand up on take off and I, the wheels, there is a signal in, there’s a lever inside the cockpit that you lift up and the undercarriage will come up, but it's governed that it must be airborne, [laugh] but I could put my finger in and lift it, lift it and bring the undercarriage up, but it shouldn’t be. Well I used to stand to his right hand doings, and quite often in the speed, you got chatter, chatter, and you put them fully forward for maximum take off weight but the vibration and chatter they would start travelling back and you had to hold them together, or sometimes I’d get up there and I’d hold them together, hold them by the fingers there and he’s again this, because we were taking over the Great North Road, and rumour had it, I don’t know [emphasis] but rumour had it that they stopped large vehicles going, taking off, passing there while we were using that runway. While, one occasion I’m there, we wore goggles in case you’ve got a window closed, open, well he, the pilot, Hank, would hold the control column fully, er, driving that, and watching the doings, don’t chatter, hah, he used to put his thumb up, right, okay, up with the bloody undercarriage straight away you see, because you gather speed because they had, they reckoned it was as bad as thirty degrees of flap, undercarriage down, anyway and I pulled them up. Well we’d done this several times like that he goes like that, I goes oh, oh with the bloody undercarriage you see. Well then, I felt sure it went like that, and I looked up, and it wasn’t that, it was because his goggles had fallen over his eyes [laugh] and to this day now, there’s only me knows that I brought the undercarriage up too early! Anyway, this was just the first trip of which I’ll tell you about, and it was a place called Bochum, but anyway, everything went okay and bloody navigator said to me ‘what you doing Syd?’, I said ‘I’m just having a look out’, so he says ‘come here, that’s where we’re going.’ [laughs] [indecipherable] I thought, well bloody hell. Anyway I was really excited and I used to do a lot of work and run backwards and forwards and I used to stand up see if I could see anything you know and help in that respect. It really took it out of me because, I don’t know why, ah well when we disembarked on arrival back to town, back to home, we were allocated to certain tables and we were talked to by the, by intelligence officers and making notes and what was it like, so and so, did you see this, you see, I suppose and then they’d compare them with others, and where’s he? Oh, and you could have coffee and rum – I was asleep on the floor! So, it had took something out of me. Anyway, that was it and we had a, quite a good doings. You see, now, the trouble is, I get embarrassed by your novels and people that write books and stories about Bomber Command and this that and the other because a lot of it’s not true, and you know, like they say, ‘oh Commander to tail end Charlie, are you there, Ned?’ [Laugh] I said all that rubbish ‘cause they don’t do that, no rank on the aircraft. The pilot, Henry, that was his surname, Henry, Henry was a sergeant, I was a sergeant, bomb aimer was a sergeant – he was Canadian - mid upper was English, he was a sergeant and the tail gunner was a flight sergeant, but however, and we’re on one occasion we were having trouble, we’d been what they called coned when you get a lot of searchlights on you at the same time and by jove it’s light and of course, I don’t understand artillery, but there’s some means that they can do something to the guns where the explosion takes, occurs, on a predetermined altitude. Well when there’s a do you go in waves, you see, well we know that eighteen thousand, they set the guns to fire at eighteen, but you see you get a wave and you might be going in at twenty thousand feet, you see, well the Germans – height twenty thousand feet, get ‘em up, but before the guns, they’d, twenty have gone over and someone’s come and they’re flying at sixteen thousand feet and they’ve got to readjust the guns and that’s the idea and in consequence you have to be on, over the target on time [emphasis] or otherwise you would be dropping bombs on your fellows or they’d be having a go at you! So it was very essential that you were there on time. Well, we’d had a do and we’d been evading, evading artillery and searchlights, successfully, and obviously we weren’t on course and he called me, ‘Syd, here, come here, what do you reckon that is?’ So I just got just across, you know, from here to that table, so I went, I says ‘it’s a lake, innit.’ So he says ‘yeah, what is it? Do you reckon it’s so and so so and so?’ I says, ‘Christ,’ I says, ‘I don’t know’, I says ‘I’m not geography, I don’t know.’ He says ‘I reckon it is.’ Well of course, I hadn’t thought, but you see you cannot navigate until you know where you are to start, you see, and of course when you have a few minutes of diving and climbing and that, of course you don’t, you’re not on course. Anyway we had to, we hadn’t been over the target, but anyway we did our job and came away and he managed to calculate where we’d been and he did a fine job, and that was it, but I’ll never forget that day. Deviating somewhat, I’ll tell you this: this is surprising. Well no, it’s a shame really, [cough] my wife and I, not at the airport, at home - this is after the war - and we went to a place and we were having a lunch and she says ‘I’ll go and get, I don’t know what I want, I’ll see what I want’, so I said, so I sat in a chair, I said I’ve got two chairs, you see, and I was guarding those and how you look around and up at the other end of the restaurant room, I saw a man, biggish chap, and he’d got the diabolical table manners, he appeared to me, and I’d seen that but I felt that I wanted to have another look and I kept looking. Anyway, this feller stands up and he comes wobbling down to me, I thought now I’m for it, you know, I mean I was eight stone wet through and he was about sixteen stone and I thought well we’re in for it! He says ‘do you know me?’ I said to him, ‘well I thought I did’. He says ‘only you was looking.’ I says ‘I know I was, I thought I knew you.’ He says: ‘well?’ I says ‘well I don’t know you.’ So he says ‘oh’, he says ‘I wondered why you kept looking up and I were getting a bit annoyed’ or embarrassed. ‘Oh’, he says, ‘that’s a Bomber Command badge in your doings’, so I says ‘yes’. He says ‘are you in the Air Force?’ I says ‘I was’, ‘oh’ he says ‘yeah, oh right!’ And of course we were buddies then. We were buddies then. So he says ‘where you go? I said ‘I go to the Cheshire Aircrew Association’ so he says ‘do yer?’ He says ‘it’s supposed to be a bit smooth there.’ So he says ‘aye, well I go to Barton, you see, that’s at the aerodrome’, I said ‘do yer?’, so he says ‘I’d like you to come’, he said ‘and you’ll like it and you’ll probably want to start coming with us.’ So I said - you see well he hadn’t mentioned anything about me looking at him - so he says well, I forget, he said ‘I’m known there, everybody knows me there’, you see, you see, he says me name’s. I said ‘what is your name?’ he says Morgan, he says, ‘better still, they call me No Fingers Morgan.’ I says pardon, No Fingers Morgan that’s the reason why he couldn’t manipulate his eating, so he says ‘they all know me: No Fingers Morgan.’ So I says okay and he was one of the New Zealander, the New Zealander surgeon that looked after the RAF and he’d been there and seen him and his hands finished there. So I says ‘Christ’ I says, ‘did you jump?, I didn’t know that till then, so did you fall out?’ So he says no. I thought he’d parachuted you see, and you could get frostbite, so he says no, I went there, and he was the flight engineer to see the damage and the door was just hanging on the hinges this that and the other, and of course he’d did what he had no right to do: he’d gone without oxygen, because we used to carry oxygen with us. That was, I’ll never forget that. But after a time they’d finished their operations because they’d all been on Wellingtons, they left there and I, now where did I bloody go then? I left there and oh, and er, oh, and oh, er, I’d been, well I went direct from there, I think I went direct from there to 514. Oh yeah, I went there to 514.
SP: So you went from Halifaxes at Leeming, you’re flying Halifaxes, to 514.
SC: Yes, yes. Now, I’d had an option to say would I like to be an engineer, I says I am a bloody engineer! So she says but would you like to do all the lot, so I says yeah, yeah. So I was an engineer, but I wasn’t sergeant, but that to come. Well I went to, oh, I went to Foulsham, that’s F O U L S H A M: pronounced wrong and spelt right, it was foul, terrible! Anyway we went there but 514 hadn’t started, they didn’t have an aeroplane. I think they had one or two, maybe, and they were doing what they call acceptance, you see you just don’t have aeroplane and go flying, you check everything’s on right you see. And they were just forming in Foulsham and they had, just prior to them forming this, but there would be [muttering] er, anyway, Foulsham and getting parts together and one thing and another, and I worked there on the aircraft, then, we’d only been there about maybe a month and we moved to Waterbeach. Well, who should be, no, I was a sergeant when I went there, anyway, it don’t matter, but chap come, Orderly Sergeant, Giles, him that I knew at the other place, and Jones, they were there, but they had to gather people from anywhere to form because, you see that shows you, those are just engineers, no, that picture there, the R and I – Repair and Inspection - he was a marvel was, that’s him there, he was just my size him, Squadron Leader, and well that shows, all these were associated with the maintenance of the aircraft.
SP: So what you’re showing me is a plane with about-
SC: Pardon?
SP: So you’re showing me a plane that’s got crew the width of the plane and about seven deep, so there’s a lot of people on there, so.
SC: Well, you can have the photograph if you want.
SP: We’ll photograph it and put it with the recordings, there’ll be a photograph of this, but we’re talking about the Technical Wing, commanded by Squadron Leader.
SC: That’s him. Jim Healey, yeah.
SP: Jim Healey, and this was at Waterbeach.
SC: He was a smashing, you see, and they were running short of engineers who could do the job, you see. I don’t know whether they blame the schools or not, but it was just the job. So I went there as an engineer and they didn’t have Halifaxes, they had Lancasters, and I never had anything to do with the, well you have to have aircraft as they come. Some have radial engines, some have in line engines, they don’t say pop ‘em on, we’re short of an in line, we’re not going to bother until we can get one, you know, so radial like a Hercules they’re a different thing, I never had much to do with them. Anyway, and Giles there, Giles in’t it, fancy seeing you anyway. Now, you see I’m just interrupting meself now, and there is too [emphasis] much emphasis laid on aircrew at the expense of groundcrew. Now Giles, we used to call him Farmer Giles, miserable bugger he was, but I got on well with him, and he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke and he never did but work and he was a marvellous worker, sergeant, and he come and he’d lost an eye, I don’t know what happened, but in the meantime of me going other place he lost an eye, and him, he got on his knees to let him still join, keep the Air Force, and he stayed until he was chucked out and he’d only got one eye. I must tell you this before I go any further, well eyes, in those days went to Moorfields which is supposed to be the epitome of good eye people in London: Moorfields. He went to, sent him to Moorfields and they measured it or whatever they do, and he had that eye, but of course in those days they were glass eyes, plastic hadn’t got, I’m going forward, well I’ll leave that there, and he was a good worker was Giles, so that was fair enough. Of course I got promoted to corporal, I got promoted to sergeant you see, so that suited me, suited Giles and everyone, and I would say this, I don’t know why, but I was the only person ever [emphasis], as far as I know [sound of steps then drawer opening and cutlery] who they had a whip round for their marriage and they bought me cutlery and that, and Giles organised it and I’d never come across him before.
SP: And you’ve still got that one today – you’re just showing me the cutlery.
SC: And that was very, very, I was grateful of that, not because of the doings, anyway, I had that. Anyway, we went and we had our, oh, and bloody hell, 19, we went there in ’94. We left there and went to another station.
SP: 1944.
SC: And that was, they’d gone, coming to block one night, well in later days bleedin’, bloody Waterbeach, there’s limited flying and that, they says right, you’re doing, looking at, assessing equipment, so because we didn’t need it any more, finished, 514 wasn’t flying no more and you know. Service, you had different coloured labels and I had to sign them that: fit for reissue, beyond repair and this that and the other. Anyway, so we goes to this bloody place and there’s a Squadron Leader Knight was in charge and he says, ‘are you Cooper?’ I said yeah, he said ‘right, I’ve got a job for you’, he said. I said ‘bloody hell what’s that?’ See ‘cause they’d finished, and he’d just men there, so he says ‘we’re packing up and you can do that and you’ll be at hangar number three.’ So anyway that went by and Christmas time, no I’m going back a year because they had an explosion at Christmas in C Flight did 514, and there was about eleven killed, at Christmas time, but I was away on leave at the time so I missed that.
SP: Do you know actually happened?
SC: Pardon?
SP: Do you know what caused it?
SC: Well a bomb came off, bomb, I don’t, well you see, you never know you see, because they were loading bombs on and anyone that has an idea weren’t there! They were killed.
SP: So this was as they were loading the loading bombs for an operation.
SC: Yeah, I think there was about seventeen killed. But anyway, that was very sad. Anyway, where the hell was I? I got posted from there to there, I was there, I was only there two days and going there, and I can’t remember the place but it was a nice, nice place to go but I never went. They called me in says we’ve got a job for you, I says oh, so I said ‘where is it?’ He said, oh, previous to this, the, a Flight Lieutenant Wand tried to get me to go to this Spain, and Healey thought the world of me, I don’t know why, then he says, called for me, Squadron Leader, so he says ‘look do you know, would you like to go to Italy?’ I says ‘Italy?’ So he says yeah, he says ‘Wand’s put you to Italy’, he said ‘you don’t want to go there, there’s bloody mosquitos and that, do you still want to go?’ so I says no, so he says, ‘right, you’re off.’ Anyway, of course they all caught up with me, Healey goes, posted off somewhere else ‘cause this man he hadn’t got a job and then come and said ‘oh we’ve got a job for you – Italy.’ I says ‘Italy? But the war’s over’, so I says ‘well how come’, so he said ‘oh you’ll see. Anyway, you’re going to 1 or 2 LSU’, that’s Lancaster Servicing Units in Italy. So, bloody hell, so I went to Italy and unbeknownst to lots of people, I venture to suggest, is that there was a chance of a war breaking out between Yugoslavia and Italy over, it’s not called Siles, what they call it, the big city up north? I’ll think of it later, over this city. It had gone from one to another over the years and of course Italy had recently transferred their [cough] favours to England rather than Germany you see, so right. But of course you never get a hundred percent, yes there was still, for reasons best known to themselves, sooner be in with the Germans, but anyway, so I’m on my bloody way to Germany, to Italy. It was good in Italy, we did a lot there. The services had took the palace – apparently there used to be a king of Italy, king of this palace - you could go there and have a shower or something like that, press your suit for you or something, and in Sorrento, have you been to Italy? Sorrento, well the main hotel in the square, near where the YMCA was, they took that over as well so we could go there, I went there about three times for the weekend, free, and of course we could go over to er, Capri, Capri they had a Capri backwards and forwards. Well, I’ll come to that later. Anyway, Brown, who was a bit up, I mean I remember his telephone number, Weston 1368, plenty of money, I thought I’d got them in here [paper rustling].
SP: You went to the opera, yeah.
SC: And he made these for us, for, see these are all things that I’ve seen. They’re in English.
SP: So you’re showing me all the programmes 1945 to ‘46.
SC: Yeah, I mean with them being Italian, the one thing, Italian talk, all the time and you don’t know what’s going on, but that helps you.
SP: Yeah. Details for the British Military Authorities of Naples, all transcribed, the actual operas of La Boheme, Rigoletto, and you got invited to all of these.
SC: Well we went regularly, well we had to pay, but this chap was familiar with, something a bit highbrow. Brown they called him; he had a beautiful case like that, with seven razors in it, he says, ‘Oh no, I’ll use Wednesday today’, [chuckle] but he was nice chap. They won’t be interested in those, would they?
SP: I’ll photograph them so they’re with, I’ll photograph one of them so we’ve got it with it.
SC: Oh right. But it’s quite a thing isn’t it.
SP: It is, yeah.
SC: And we were at the piano which is on the first floor which is next to the Royal Box. You couldn’t have the Royal Box but we’d be one side or the other side. Of course we had to pay, and I thought perhaps that might, you might want that.
SP: So you’re showing me here your operational records for all of 514 Squadron, again we’ll put these, I’ll photograph this for the Archives and leave everything with you and take the photograph.
SC: I thought perhaps that was of some interest, the Opera House.
SP: Yeah, very much so. So obviously, after your time in Italy did you then return to England?
SC: Yeah. Well, I went backwards and forwards. It was hard work, but these bombers came in to let these, look we know what’s going on, but it was never published. I’ve never come across anyone that knows. There was between eight and twelve bombers, every day [emphasis] went there, somewhere, there to Bari, Bari’s on the Adriatic, that’s LS2, LSU2, on the Adriatic coast, Bari, B A R I. Funny part was, that railway line crossed the landing, coming in across the landing coming in, that’s aircraft there, but I enjoyed it but it put me back so I didn’t get released, but there’s no medal for that, no medal for that, no, not to this day there isn’t, because lots of people don’t know that it existed. I mean and they was nine months, backwards and forwards, these bombers, just to let them know that we were a force to be contended with, still, in spite of the war finishing; that’s what we heard. Well, I’ll just tell you this, it was there you never bothered about nothing, saluting or anything there. [Chuckle] Came up hey, there was going to be a parade. Parade! A parade, [emphasis] no bloody Parade! Oh aye there is, there’s a parade. Now, a strike had broke out in Far East and they thought it was coming right through, so they’d block it there and then. I’ll never forget, so we just stood there, you know, for this doings and bloody Wing Commander, er Squadron Leader Wright came out and said, you know, he knew about it, I suppose they had advised the Station Commander and he came and a bloke said there can’t be a strike, and Lapthorne, Lapthorne was the MT, Motor Transport, in charge. I suppose he was a Flight Lieutenant or sommat, but he was a rough ‘un, so bloke says there’s something going on cause Lapthorne’s had a bloody haircut! [Laughter] So anyway, that’s what happened and it didn’t develop. But we had a good time in Italy really, and that, but I mean lots of people decided to go home. Spent the first time, the first Christmas in Italy and there was going, there was something non, non, I forget the name they gave to it, you’re not to associate with Germans, English people, and of course it went with the staff. Well on this place we had what used to be a very big olive grove and we turned it into an RAF camp. We had German prisoners of war and - poor souls - they’d gone out the desert and they’d got shorts on, and cotton tops, and this was Christmas 19, Christmas 1965.
SP: ’45.
SC: Christmas 1965.
SP: ’45, yeah.
SP: Yeah. ’45 and so we said, and some of them, and some of them were nasty people because they belonged to German, Hitler Youth, and waiters in the sergeant’s ess, what bloke can do, can’t give them jobs. Anyway we held a little, I think I’ve seen a bloody picture short time ago of the, [drawer opening] oh that’s it, that’s behind the bar at, it’s the sergeants mess, but I’ve got one of the mess somewhere, and the waiters, and we held a little meeting, there was only about fourteen of us, senior NCOs, and said yeah but they’re bloody Germans, what do we do with them? They were in tents [emphasis] and this is Christmas and snowing. Yeah, oh Christ, it was cold. There was a fellow from Glossop, a sergeant, and he says, excuse me, you know, we were chatting amongst ourselves, what can we do you know, chatting amongst ourselves, what can we do, and this that and the other, we can’t talk, we can’t have nowt to do with ‘em, and he got the bloody real people moaning, because we wanted them to enjoy Christmas as we did - to a lesser extent - and anyway he says, the quiet bloody, this chap in from Glossop, the sergeant, he says ‘from now on we’ll call you’ -what bloody hell did they call him? Ferodo, - he says ‘your bloody behaviour would stop a bloody eight ton truck’, you know, Ferodo, the bloody battery works out there. Anyway, they enjoyed themselves to some extent. I used to walk to work, about from here maybe to the main road, which was quite way, taking chocolates for kids and sweets and they’d come and meet you on the way down. But anyway I come up, got, it closed. Oh Christ, we came up on the train, oh Jesus, through the Apennines and through Austria, took us about six or seven days to get home, on the trains! Bridges broken down and one thing and another. [Laugh] Senior NCOs, there was six to each carriage, so how the hell we’re going to bloody sleep? I says don’t know. We’d got all our clobber with us, he says he’s at it again, he’s going to organise this, be nothing when he’s bloody finished! So I says ‘right, seats across, one on each. One on the floor between the two seats, on the floor. Right’, I says, ‘and two of us on the luggage rack’, you see, luggage rack each. So says, ‘oh right, we’ll put on there now’, says there’s bloody seven, ‘there’s six of us’, ‘oh yeah’, I says, ‘I’ll make a bloody hammock!’ So I got some rope off the kit bags and this that and the other, emptied hammock, put it on the door, that like that and I was up swinging in this and it pulled the bloody door off the hinges! So I landed on him on the bottom! But anyway, you know, we had some really good times, I mean just didn’t, you see we, of course you can’t put it down he was with me, and he and I a very short, very [emphasis] short of people like us, not because it was us, but engineers and that, and someone had let ‘em go, you know, released, and I was, and both of us were sent, well I didn’t know, I was at Rugby station and he turned up. I says where you going and he says so and so, I says so am I! So anyway we’d gone to this here squadron, it was No 1, No 1 Advanced, it was letters, headlines, No 1 Advanced Flying Training School, so he and I were there.
SP: Who was with you?
SC: Well, he was with us in Italy. But I meet him, I met him on the platform.
SP: What was his name?
SC: Pardon?
SP: What was his name?
SC: Don’t know, he comes from Darlington, Ginger he was known as, he comes from Darlington. We goes there and we arrive there and there were Harvards, you’ve heard of Harvards, haven’t you, well they’re American. But of course, I mean they had American single bank bloody radials, made no difference to us. We got there and they was waiting, and it was said [emphasis] that one of the, the engineer, who I relieved, he’d been a Japanese prisoner of war! But he said right, I’m off and buggered off. Anyway I was in charge, he was in, and Ginger was in charge and there should have been about, there should have been a Warrant Officer, we’ll say two, four, four, er, sergeants and four flight sergeants with a crown over the top and four ordinary sergeants like we were, him and me, but that’s all there was, only him and me. Anyway, I must tell you this, although perhaps you won’t do it, but in the Air Force lots of people, you go on your own somewhere, you know, they needed so and so to go, right. Well you have an Arrival Form to have filled, with the various departments. Likewise, when you leave the station you have a Departure Form of which you must have endorsed for every place: doctor, dentist, fire brigade, gas, you had to have gas, and sergeants mess and so on and so on, so you can’t walk away with stuff. Well you see, of course if you’re going away maybe you want to, can’t get away quick enough, but [emphasis] to arrive is a different kettle of fish. We thought oh Christ, it’s going to be murder, it’s going to be bloody murder here, [cough] so we get this thing this thing, it’s about that size, got to go [laugh] and this that and the other. So, course when you arrive there you see, I mean I’d come a sweat then, I know what was going, a sergeant, you know, but I’d been there six years, and you live and learn, so course there’s this list and you go and get them to sign that you’ve reported, you see. Course the first one, where do we go? Pay Accounts, so you get bloody paid, second place you go: sergeants mess you want to get your head down you know, and all that. You see. Where’s the last? The last is where you’re going to work you see, so you go there. [Chuckle] So anyway, and [muttering] and we went there, I noticed, now I can’t remember his name and I know you wouldn’t be able to find it, it was a shame, but he was a Wing Commander over the engineering, Wing Commander White, just one syllable his name, but it’ll come some time, anyway [laughter] we goes to the, goes there, well I’d had to come, you know, polish your boots, extra [rubbing sound] buttons, you know and this that and the other. Anyway, knocks at the door. Well it’s a funny thing, but from the engineering point, senior NCOs, I mean because a lot of the officers knew nothing about the bloody job and they relied on you, you see, you usually knock on the door and open it, and say only a few minutes, er, girl will come, you know, secretary will come and let you in, so you while, so obviously, you see, so we gets up there, knocks on this, bloody Wing Commander that must have come across, right, knocks at the door, no, knocks at the door, no. So [laugh] Ginger says ‘there’s nobody in, bloody hell, come on, let’s go to the mess.’ I says ‘there is somebody in.’ He says ‘how the bloody hell do you know?’ I says ‘I can hear ‘em writing’, biros hadn’t been invented, I could hear [scraping sound], and course I went like this. I says ‘there’s somebody in there, I says, ‘I can hear them writing’, so knocks on the door, opens the door and there’s this fellow sat at the desk, looks up, carries on, so goes in. Ginger, there’s somebody, I say told you. So we goes in, so he says ‘did you hear me say come in sergeant?’ so I says no sir. He says [laugh] ‘well, eff off, get out!’ Ginge says ‘No, I didn’t hear you either’, says ‘well you can eff off and get out.’ So went outside then he come out and girl come and says Wing Commander so and so would like to see you. So we goes in and he was smart as paint. Oh, you couldn’t, and I would guess him to be at least fifty odd, fifty five, Wing Commander. He says well, he says, you’ve got a lot of work to do, and this that and the other, you see, bloody hell, I was, so I yes I understand that, he said do you know Harvards he says. No, I said, but I know the bloody engine. Oh right, so he goes there. I’ll tell you this, out of it, he’s walking round, and he’s got a, he was an officer, with a mil board to write down anything he tells him. So he comes to me, says Cooper, always called me bloody Cooper, Cooper he says, right yeah, and he got this feller, this officer, and he was knocking on as well, so he says ‘‘scuse me sir, ‘scuse me’ - I don’t know his name – ‘but what do you want Johnson?’ He says ‘you’ve got some white chalk on your trousers.’ So he looks this, imagine he’s tall, he’s about six foot two, and he looks this: ‘white, yes, chalk, you don’t bloody know’, he said, and he dusted it off, and anyway, he said, ‘you were right, it is bloody chalk.’ I thought, Christ, work with him. Anyway I know on one occasion he come there and said how are things going, oh they’re all right, and he knew everything that went on, so he says so and so and so and so, he says not working on this? I says no, I says it’s only just come in. It hasn’t, he says, I saw it yesterday, oh Christ! But anyway, he was always, and he’d shout full length of the doings for me, you know, are you there and that. Anyway, I can’t remember how much, but I had a sum of money offered if I’d stay on, it was about four hundred pound if I’d join, but of course I mean I was married, I had no home to go to, she was in with the mother in law and all that, so you know I don’t like going, but I enjoyed it really, I was you know, some days, important, aye. Well if you broke anything you see, anything like a drill, you had to take the shank, but the shank, not the twisted part, and give it them you see or otherwise you could take the other part next and get two! [Chuckle] Bloody Giles, he says to the doctor, ‘I don’t suppose it’s any much point in the stores’, so he says ‘why, what’s wrong Giles?’ He says ‘I dropped me eye’, dropped it. He says ‘you what?’ He says ‘me eye.’ His false eye, he’d dropped it on the floor: smashed to bits. So he said ‘I didn’t know you’d have to bring the bloody bits for an eye!’ So anyway they did, they sent him to Med, well you just can’t buy an eye. Now this is a bit embarrassing: [laugh] we was going on the bloody train, this is at Waterbeach, we were going to London. I was going to see my wife to come but, and he was going to Moorfields for another eye, well you just can’t order one, you know, it’s really. So imagine that’s the [paper rustling] carriage, goes that way. There was a lady there and a lady there, and they looked matronly, if that’s the right thing, well Giles gets in and gets there and I get there but, separate spaces, and right, off it’s going, so he’s going to Moorfields and I’m going to Welwyn Garden City over the, [laugh] and hustle and bustle, a man come in, big man, big man about fifty, fifty something, sits between me and that woman over there and [blowing sound], so opens his attaché case and gets papers, drops ‘em [banging on paper] thought we’re going to have a bloody good time then. [Cough] Anyway, it was obvious to me he wanted to go to the bloody toilet. So I, he, Giles, never told him, but anyway, he goes to the toilet, and he goes to the toilet through the bloody window of the, as the train’s going along. People won’t believe this but it’s true as true, and he come back, you see, dead smart he was, mac and bowler hat and this attaché case, and says er: ‘Well ladies and gentlemen, ladies, you must, I must apologise, what else can you do,’ he said, ‘and you too gentlemen’ he says, ‘but I wouldn’t burst my bladder if I was dining with the Queen of England!’ [Laugh] Bloody hell, people will not [emphasis] believe that! Now I used to be able to get hold of Giles. Giles lived till he was about ninety seven! I used to go to his house to see him in the Lakes. Now Jones lived in Birmingham, it’s really sad you see, and it’s coming to lots of people, could be me if I’m not careful, as he had to go into a home, he came from Wigan. I knew his son and he’s gone, but I didn’t know where he’d gone or anything and Wigan’s a big place really, and so I phoned his son up, so he said, well he said, leave it, I won’t tell you over the phone, call and I’ll give you, I’ll write it for you, letters, but he says but I must warn you, he says, he does a lot of sleeping and I think it is, I said to him across road, says, I mean if I’m here and this that and the other, there’s a, so that was it. So I went with British Airways for twenty eight years and then of course I got a job as a clerk and here I am, fed up! [Laugh]
SP: And you worked quite a long time didn’t you? Was it, what age did you retire from your clerking?
SC: Well I wanted to go till I was ninety but I was taken ill when I was ninety, eighty nine, eighty nine and I had to be brought home three weeks running, but it’s.
SP: So you worked as a clerk until you were eighty nine. That’s fantastic!
SC: Yeah, I used to do everything at home, but I can’t do a thing, can’t even go up the loft now. But it’s very, very upsetting really, you know, I mean to say, as I said to Albert across the road, I said we are not living, we’re just existing, till you know, till the final day. See I won’t go in a home.
SP: I think Syd, you’ve done remarkably well to work until you’re eighty nine and you’ve got a fantastic home so I’d just like to thank you on behalf of International Bomber Command Centre for your time today and all the stories that you’ve told us.
SC: Do you think they’ll accept the manner which we’ve done it?
SP: Absolutely, you’ve just told us exactly your story and that’s what we’re after at the International Bomber Command Centre, so thank you.
SC: Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ACooperSF170913, PCooperS1501
Title
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Interview with Syd Cooper. Two
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:14:46 audio recording
Creator
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Susanne Pescott
Date
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2017-09-13
Description
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Sidney Cooper was born in Blackpool and speaks about his early life there. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He first served as an engine fitter in Fighter Command before remustering as aircrew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 427 Squadron from RAF Leeming. He later served as ground crew with 514 Squadron. On leaving the Air Force in 1946 he worked for Standard Telephones and British Airways. Syd finally retired at eighty nine.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--Blackpool
Italy--Bari
England--Lancashire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
427 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
entertainment
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Harvard
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Oxford
RAF Foulsham
RAF Leeming
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/262/3410/AGouldAG160708.2.mp3
73437c87dfac06a7e6749cfe5ed84141
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gould, Allen
Allen G Gould
Allen Gould
A G Gould
A Gould
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-seven items. Concerns Allen Geoffrey Gould (b. 1923, 1605203 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and the Special Operations Executive. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his log book, flight engineer course notebooks, pilot's and engineers handling notes, mention in London Gazette, official documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Allen Geoffrey Gould and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gould, AG
Requires
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Sgt. Allen G. Gould – 1605203, was born in 1923, after leaving school in Bournemouth at 13, he worked for the Danish Bacon Company until being called up in 1943. Choosing to join the RAF, initially wanting to be a Navigator, he ended up as a Flight Engineer, flying in the Short Stirling Mk. I, II, III and IV variants. Training at RAF St. Alban, then the Heavy Conversion Unit. Allen joined No. 620 Squadron, flying from various bases, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Leicester East and then RAF Fairford. The roles for this squadron were not just bombing missions but Minelaying, Supply drops, Glider Towing and Paratrooper drops. He took part in D-Day, dropping paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division over Caen, France on the night of 5th June 1944, returning on the 6th towing a glider of heavy equipment. He was also a part of Market Garden, towing a glider on 17th September 1944 and returning on the 19th and 21st on supply drops. There were also numerous drops on behalf of Special Operations Executive (SOE) as well as Special Air Service (SAS) dropping supplies and paratroopers.
Andrew St.Denis
Allen Gould was born on 16 June 1923 in Bournemouth. He left school at fourteen and worked for the Danish Bacon company until he was called up. His father having spent four years in the trenches, in WW1, advised him against joining the Army, so he volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
He joined the RAF on in October 1942 and following basic training he attended the first-ever direct entry, Flight Engineers’ Course at RAF St Athan.
On completion of flight engineering training, he joined up with his crew on 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall, then moved with them onto 620 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh and later RAF Leicester East.
The squadron later relocated to RAF Fairford where they trained to tow gliders. He was billeted with 12 others in a Nissan hut, conveniently close to a trout stream. They often caught trout, away from the watchful eye of the bailiff and cooked them in a tin on the large coke stove that heated the hut. The illicit bounty was a most welcome supplement to the barely adequate daily rations they received.
Direct out of training with no aircraft experience he had to earn the trust of his crew who up until then had only come across experienced flight engineers. On only his second operational trip and flying with an inexperienced crew, they arrived late over Ludwigshafen, where they found themselves alone and under concentrated anti-aircraft fire. The aircraft was being peppered and was full of holes while the pilot was executing extreme manoeuvres trying to avoid further damage. A fuel tank was hit and Allen had to work hard to ensure the engines received sufficient fuel to keep running. At the same time he had to make sure there would be enough fuel remaining to get back to the south coast of England for an emergency landing. As the aircraft approached the runway, the airfield lights went out and the pilot announced he was going to do another circuit. Allen told him, bluntly, he couldn’t as he didn’t have enough fuel, so the pilot made a steep turn and conducted a blind landing with no fuel to spare. Allen bonded well with his crew and in their free time they would often all go out to the pub together.
Throughout his tour his squadron undertook a variety of roles, much of was it in support of the Special Operations Executive personnel, operating covertly in occupied Europe. They also trained to tow gliders and dropped parachuting troops on D Day.
Allen completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and he totalled over 460 flying hours on Stirlings. PGouldAG1610.2.jpg (1600×2310) (lincoln.ac.uk)
For his services to 620 Squadron, he was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for distinguished service. MGouldAG1605203-160708-13.2.pdf (lincoln.ac.uk)
Post war, he married his wife, Norma, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. PGouldAG1601.2.jpg (1600×2412) (lincoln.ac.uk)
Allen was discharged in October 1946 having attained the rank of Warrant Officer. PGouldAG1604.1.jpg (1600×2330) (lincoln.ac.uk)
He returned to the Danish Bacon company where he worked for another 40 years.
Chriss Cann
October 1942: Volunteered for the RAF
January 1943 - July 1943: RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer Training
July 1943 - September 1943: RAF Stradishall, 1657 HCU, flying Stirling aircraft
September 1943 - December 1943: RAF Chedburgh, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
January 1944 - March 1944: RAF Leicester East, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
March 1944 - April 1945: RAF Fairford,620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
8 October 1946: Released from service having attained the rank of Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the eighth of July two thousand and sixteen, we’re in Oxford talking to Allen Gould about his experiences flying Stirling’s in the war. Allen what are your first recollections of life with the family?
AG: Well I went to school at Winton and Moordown council boys school in Bournemouth, erm, left when I was fourteen, which irritated my father, ‘cos he hadn’t got the money to pay for me to go to grammar school, there were only two seats allocated to our school, after the erm, eleven plus, and, erm, everybody there failed except for the doctor’s son and the councillor’s son, who both got a grammar school seat, which I would have loved but there you are, because in those days that was the only way you could get to university, grammar school first and then go, [pause] and I left school at fourteen, got a job with the Danish Bacon Company, [pause] a shit house firm right from the start, I was there for, getting on for forty years, after the war I came back there and erm, and then I, my nerves got back to normal when I was, after I had been away from the air force for, ten or twelve years, and erm, I got another job, which I was quite pleased about but they wouldn’t let me take my pension with me which my new firm offered to do and treat it as though I had been there all that time, but they didn’t, they made me take the whole thing out, not the part they paid in, all I’d been paid in, they made me take that out as part of my last week’s wages there, ‘cos the income tax that week would frighten anybody, [laughs] and that was it, and I was there until I got called up, with erm, three other fellas, I was the only one that came back without any damage, two of ‘em got killed, one of them finished up with one leg about three inches shorter than the other, I was the only one that was alright when I came back, and then went on the road and did commercial travelling, up and down the country, and I did that with a new firm I joined, Patrick Grainger and Hutleys, nice firm based in Fordingbridge, [pause] so I was up at half past five in the morning going to work, driving up to Fordingbridge, and picking up one of my drivers along the way [pause]
CB: Ok, so, you started with the bacon company, how did you come to join the RAF?
AG: Well, I rather fancied it you know I mean when I was called up my father had done four years in the trenches and he said ‘no way are you going into the army, my cocker’ so I said ‘ Oh alright I’ll take your advice on that’, so I put my name down for the RAF, and when it came to a choice between this and that and I thought flying, oh wow, let’s have a go at that.So, er, I, finished up in Blackpool getting my uniform and one thing and another, and then erm, posted from there down to St Athans, on this first directory, first direct [emphasis], flight engineers course, because they were losing so many flight engineers who’d taken a long time, a really [emphasis] long time in training and they couldn’t afford it any longer. So we were pushed through, erm, six months and I was out on the squadron, at erm, Stradishall and then in the finish we wound up at Fairford and we were there for years, [pause] the only other aerodrome we flew from during that time was from Hurn, just outside Bournemouth
CB: So, you did your training at St Athan, what was the training that you did there?
AG: Direct entry flight engineer
CB: Yeh, but, what was involved in that?
AG: Well, really all it boiled down to was, looking at pictures of engines and exploring the airframes, and one thing and another, so when we were flying I was always on the move, bouncing up and down on me toes for up to twelve hours if we went down as far as Switzerland, ‘cos flight engineers don’t have a seat [pause]
CB: Ok, so on the training though there’s a lot of aspects of the aircraft?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what aspects were you dealing with, you talked briefly about airframe, but what else were they focussing on?
AG: Oh, erm, the engines and erm, more particularly the amount of fuel they would be using and heights we were going to, how it objected on the fuel take up and er all that sort of thing
CB: So, on an aircraft the size of the four engine planes, how many tanks would there be on those planes?
AG: Err
CB: Fuel tanks
AG: Numbers two and four, and one, two and three in each wing
CB: So, what was the flight engineer’s job in that?
AG: Well. I had to control that, when the pilot was fiddling about with the controls, I was watching the dials and making sure that everything was as it should be, erm, we only got into real trouble on one flight, erm, when we were still sort of, an inexperienced crew, we had to, erm, join bombers going to Mannheim Ludwigshafen and we were bombing the Ludwigshafen, and being a sprog crew, ‘cos we got there ten minutes late all the others had gone through, so we were going over on our own and we were really getting bashed. Our pilot was doing mad dives and turns to get us out of it, the only thing that we lost was the number four tank in the starboard wing, so I had to run all the engines off that to make sure we used everything we possibly could, and, we did, just save enough to get back to an emergency aerodrome on the south coast, whose name I’ve forgotten to be honest, and we were just going into land and they turned all the lights off, and the pilot said ‘I’ll do another circuit’ and I said ‘ you can’t, you haven’t got enough fuel’, I’m afraid that became a funny word to them because every time he saw me in future he said ‘We can’t, we haven’t got enough fuel!’. So, he did a sweep to the left up on one wing and came straight back in and landed, lights or no lights, he was going in, and we did, I said to the bomb aimer, who was also the second pilot afterwards ‘how did you, er, cope with that ‘? He said ‘well’, he said ‘you know when the undercarriage is down you get a green light’ he said, ‘and if it’s not you get a red light’ So, he said ‘we were as bouncing down the runway and it was going red, green, red, green, red, green, red, green’, [laughs] I said, ‘Oh, thanks very much, cheered me up no end that has’
CB: But, it stayed down?
AG: Oh, yeh, we got down no bother, we just got enough. The pilot came out the following morning and said ‘Look, if we’ve got any fuel left, I’m gonna kick your arse all round this aerodrome’, so I dipped every tank, he and I walked across the wings and I dipped every tank, and it was just enough left in one of them to damp the end of the dipstick, so he shut up after that [laughs]
CB: So, it was reassuring that the gauges were accurate
AG: Well, I wondered if that was what finished up with that MiD of mine, ‘cos they must have made a note of it because we had to abandon the aircraft there and get a lift back to our aerodrome at Fairford, we just left them on this, at this other aerodrome, whose name I don’t remember unfortunately
CB: So, MiD is, mentioned in despatches?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right
AG: Yeh, so somebody must have made a note of it, I expect my pilot went back and said, ‘he was right you know, we didn’t have any fuel’ [laughs]
CB: Saved the crew, effectively
AG: Well, there you are, yeh, so, perhaps that’s what I got it for
CB: So, the reason I asked you about the training is, because clearly, it was focussed on, what in those days was state of the art aircraft, the first of the heavy bombers was the Stirling,
AG: Hmm
CB: but it was different from the other bombers, in that it had electrical circuits for so many things where others would use hydraulics
AG: Oh, yes
CB: In your basic training, what emphasis, was there, on hydraulics and electrics, in the training at St Athan?
AG: Well, skimming over it, as it was a direct entry course they didn’t waste a lot of time, I’ll tell you
CB: How did you come to do flight engineering, because you, had you, when you were working for the bacon company, had you been involved in technical matters then?
AG: No, no
CB: So, how did you come to be selected to train as a flight engineer?
AG: Well, I think they wanted when we were in Blackpool, they wanted flight engineers more than anything because they’d lost so many, and erm, I was automatically put onto that, you know, I’d erm, I think I put my name down to start with for navigation, but never got to that [pause]
CB: So, you finished the training after six months and how did you feel at the end of the training about your knowledge of engineering and aircraft?
AG: Well, I thought at the time that it wasn’t up to scratch, really, I mean, when I thought of the work that previous flight engineers had, had to do, different courses and out on a squadron for six months and then come back and do another course, I mean what we, what they went through to get us out was quick and easy, you know, and that sort of thing.
CB: So, the process for crewing up aircrew, was that at the operational training unit the crew got together, the flight engineer didn’t join until the heavy conversion unit?
AG: That’s right
CB: So, what was the crew like when you, how did you come to join an existing crew that had been on Wellingtons?
AG: Well, they were a bit iffy about having a direct entry flight engineer
CB: Were they?
AG: Because they were told I was one, and they’d never heard of anybody like that, you know, and they thought they were going to get somebody who had been out working on aircraft, on the flights, on the aerodromes, but they didn’t they got me and er, until this second trip, when I got away with this fuel business, after that we were, they relied on me, really, and er, were extremely friendly
CB: As a crew, what were the ranks, was the pilot always commissioned or was he only
AG: Oh yes
CB: Commissioned later?
AG: Yes, the pilot and the navigator and the rear gunner were all commissioned, [pause] and the wireless operator was a sergeant like me when we started flying together [pause]
CB: Ok, so you joined at the heavy conversion unit, where was that?
AG: Stradishall
CB: Right
AG: I do remember that name
CB: And how long where you at Stradishall?
AG: Oh, only about a week [pause], then we went up to Fairford and started ops
CB: Right
AG: Our first one was erm, minelaying, off erm, [unclear] Byrum [?] I think I got the name right, other side of Denmark, going down towards where the Germans were
CB: The far side of Denmark?
AG: Yeh
CB: The Swedish side?
AG: That’s right, yeh, yes, I remember coming back from there, we were flying along and you could see all the Swedish coast, all lit up, the pears, the piers and everything, all the lights
CB: Didn’t do you any good from a silhouette point of view, did it?
AG: No, it didn’t, no that’s true, yes, the only other place, that er, we were worried about the silhouette was erm, we did erm, three or four trips to Norway, supplying free Norwegians, who were up in the mountains, we had to look out for them and then drop stuff to them, funny enough, I see in the paper, that it was only last year, that they found some of the stuff that had been dropped for these people, that they never found and it was still in the snow, but when we were flying over there, we only went up there on a really full moon at night, and we could see our shadow going across the snow, well if anybody had been up, all they had to do was to look at the, moon and our shadow and they knew exactly where we were, and of course the only thing we had to worry about there, was the right up in the north of Denmark was this big German fighter unit, they used to cover the North Sea and out in the Atlantic and all over
CB: So, you were supplying the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in that case, weren’t you?
AG: Yeh, that’s right
CB: So, are you saying that the squadron, 620, had a variety of roles?
AG: Oh yes, we erm, D Day, we dropped parachutes on Caen bridge, and then we had to go back and come over again in the afternoon with gliders, with heavier equipment, down in the same place
CB: So, on gliders, where did you train for towing gliders?
AG: At Fairford
CB: What was the main activity at Fairford then?
AG: Well, the main activity there, was putting us out on raids or supply trips, which went on for years
CB: Rather than bombing you were supplying agents
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: Right
AG: We did bombing raids as well, because I remember we, that, our troops on the ground had got this, surrounded this wood which had got the Germans in it, and we had to go over and bomb these German troops in this wood, and we had a plane going over there about every ten minutes so they wouldn’t get any rest or peace and we just had to keep on bombing this wood
CB: And the effect?
AG: Well, it seemed to work alright, but erm, [pause]
CB: And what about the bombing then, other bombing, what other tasks were there? So, you talked about mine laying
AG: Yeh
CB: Well, let’s just cover minelaying for a bit, mine laying was at a low level wasn’t it
AG: Oh yes
CB: What height were you doing the mine laying?
AG: About five hundred feet
CB: Right
AG: And erm, after that I think, we were mainly doing supplies, down over France, to anyone who needed it, and we did take some paratroops over there, Occasionally we had some odd characters, there was a bloke arrived there, put his parachute on, and he’d got a very smart suit on and a bowler hat, and he was, we were dropping him outside some village, where he had to get in by himself after he landed, and pretend to be the mayor, which is why he was so smartly dressed [laughs]
CB: This was after D Day, was it?
AG: Oh, yeh, yeh, well after, yeh, and then we were sent down, a little while after that, we were sent down to Italy, ‘cos I think they had some idea of us towing gliders from Italy with heavy equipment across to Greece, but it didn’t come to anything, we been there about four or five days, and the whole thing in Greece, came to a grinding halt, so they just said, no we don’t need you and we came back to England. That picture there, is erm, when we were in Italy, Pomigliano, I think it’s a little aerodrome, not far outside Naples, [pause]. Not that we were looking forward to trying to get off there with gliders, because they’ve got these great big heavy power lines right across the end of the runways, we couldn’t see how the hell we were going to get high enough to get the glider over those
CB: Well, it’s the wrong side
AG: Fortunately, we never had to try
CB: Right, it was the
AG: We were a bit worried about that [laughs]
CB: It was the wrong side of Italy to go to Greece anyway wasn’t it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: But, the gliders were on this airfield as, well, were they?
AG: Well, no, we didn’t get as far as that
CB: Right
AG: They would have been coming from somewhere else
CB: Yeh
AG: But they stopped it in the end, said it wasn’t necessary, Greece was in a hell of a mess at the time anyway and our troops were in there, so they didn’t need the gliders, so, go on home, so we went, back to England
CB: What was the balance between supplying, agents, in activity and doing bombing raids?
AG: Very few bombing raids, it was mainly, either supply, or erm, taking people over there. I remember we had to go to an American aerodrome and pick up some American paratroops, I was very sorry for them, ‘cos the sergeant in charge said ‘have you got a gun’ I said ‘well yes, of course I’ve got my usual forty five issue’. He said ‘right, well if the first bloke refuses to jump shoot him, I shall be pushing from the back and you go out anyway’ and I thought well that’s a fine way, and I didn’t even unholster the gun ‘cos I had no intention of doing it, but erm, I’m afraid with some of these Americans I was very sorry for them, they were shit scared and badly trained, still
CB: In what way were they badly trained?
AG: Well, they’d never done a jump before, this is why he thought the bloke in front might stick his toes in and refuse to jump out, ‘cos in the Stirling, it was a big hole in the floor and you went out that way, you didn’t go out the door, ‘cos there was always the danger of being caught by the wing, by the tail, plane as it came by, so, the Stirling had a hole in the floor, and erm, these people hadn’t done any jumps at all
CB: How extraordinary
AG: Yeh well this is it, you know, they got in and clipped on
CB: They had a static line to clip on?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: But, they all went?
AG: Oh yes, they all went out, no bother at all, but erm, I won’t going to shoot anybody anyway, I was very sorry for them
CB: Now, on the supply raids and when your’e dropping, trips, when your’e dropping material and people, this is largely low level is it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh,
CB: What sort of height?
AC: Particularly with people because you had to drop them from a reasonable low height, it’s no good chucking a parachute out you know, at eighteen thousand or something like that, and hoping he’s gonna get down to where he should, because if there’s any wind blowing he would land miles away
CB: So, what height were they being dropped?
AG: Oh, between five and six hundred most of them I think, as far as I remember
CB: And most of this is in the dark, is it?
AG: Oh yes, yeh of course
CB: How did the navigator find the target for this, because you’re on your own when you do this?
AG: Oh yes, yes, oh yeh. Well, he was told, you know, where to go and miles from wherever, and er, we just had to find it, or he did
CB: Were there electronic devices used to help?
AG: No, no, we didn’t have anything like that, we had an, erm, sort of a semi radar thing, in the plane which was the start of that sort of thing, but erm
CB: Was that H2S or different?
AG: I have no idea
CB: Or other words, a mapping radar, was it?
AG: Yeh, well, it showed up, you know, things like mountains and things like that, but that was all, I mean it was fairly beginning things
CB: So, when did you start, flying with 620 Squadron?
AG: Erm, [pause], oh dear, [pause], well, it was after I’d done my six months at St Athans, so that would be
CB: So, when did you go to St Athan?
AG: Erm, so that would be erm, [pause] when I were called up, I went to Blackpool, so it would be, erm, [pause] beginning of forty-three, I suppose
CB: For six months?
AG: Yeh [pause], or was it forty-two for six months? and then on, [pause] difficult to remember because
CB: So, when in forty-one did you join, what time of year?
AG: Oh, in the September
CB: Ok, so then you went to Blackpool?
AG: When I was called up, yeh
CB: Yeh
AG: I developed scarlet fever, the week I was called up, so the doctor said I’d got to stay there, I was in bed, with a blanket over the door, which had been sprayed by my mother, to keep the germs in the bedroom [laughs] and then so when I got to Blackpool, I had to report sick with scarlet fever, and the bloke said, ‘how long have you had it’? and I told him, and he said ‘no, that’s alright, you can carry on’ [laughs.] Yes, I remember that, I was sitting there and the nurse came round and said ‘why have you come’ and I said ‘’cos, I’ve got scarlet fever’ and I could see these two blokes, either side, go like that [laughter]
CB: Amazing, [pause] so, how long were you at Blackpool?
AG: Erm, oh, must have been about, I was there quite a long time
CB: You did your square bashing there, did you?
AG: Yeh, must have been, what, three months, oh, we were not only square bashing, I was, out digging in some place where they were putting in, erm, assault courses for people to practice on, we were out digging that, while I was there, they didn’t waste us.
CB: So, that would take you to Christmas?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, you went from Blackpool to St Athan?
AG: Yeh, well, I couldn’t tell you when
CB: So, that sounds like the beginning of forty-two, we’ll check it out anyway
AG: Yeh
CB: And you were there six months, so you would have joined the squadron
AG: Yeh
CB: When?
AG: I went from there, straight to Stradishall and joined up with the crew and then we finished up in Fairford
CB: But, you were involved in operations in D Day?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: How many tours did you do?
AG: Only the one
CB: Right, and how many ops did you do?
AG: Oh, thirty-two, something like that, just over thirty, a fraction over thirty
CB: I’m going to stop just for a mo.
AG: Yeh, right
CB: We are just going to talk a little bit about the crew, we’ve talked earlier about, when Allen sorted out the fuel distribution arrangements and how they were short of fuel, and that got him accepted, but how did the crew gel?
AG: Oh, very well, erm, our pilot had a car, I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a car at Fairford, and erm, we used to go out at night, to one of the local pubs, all of us
CB: All seven of you?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh, I think we meshed very well actually
CB: Right, and how well equipped were the pubs for supplying thirsty air crew?
AG: Oh, very well, particularly the one we used to go to which had a lot of really nice-looking girls serving there, which always started my pilot, [laughs] away [laughs] if he got half the chance [laughs]
CB: Yeh, and did they ever run out of beer?
AG: No, never, never, yeh
CB: So, part of the crew was commissioned, and part of it was NCO?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what were your quarters like as an NCO?
AG: What were my what?
CB: Quarters, where were you?
AG: Oh, I was just in a billet with, twelve other people
CB: Right, so, what was the billet, a Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, a Nissan hut, yeh, and at Fairford, we were right down the bottom of the hill, by the stream, where we could go fishing for trout, very naughty, and we knew what time the bailiff used to come round, and make sure there was nobody fishing in this trout stream, and so, we always used to make sure we weren’t down there when he came by [laughs]. No, I used to like trout, done on a coke stove
CB: Is that the coke stove in the Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, yeh, that’s all the heat we had in there, was just one of these big coke stoves
CB: So, what was the recipe then, how did you deal with it, so you got the trout?
AG: Oh, put it in a tin on the top, after gutting it and chopping it, putting it on, and just standing it on the stove until it was cooked, knowing what the food was like, you know, we was always trying to add to it [laughs], one way or the other
CB: Were you normally hungry or was the normal amount adequate?
AG: Well, it was for me but I don’t think it was for some of them, but er, no, I always, I always, seemed to get on fairly well. The only funny thing that happened down at that Nissan hut that we were in, eh, one of the blokes had gone into town on his bicycle, when he came back, he’d thrown the bicycle over the fence, not realising, that he’d thrown it into a sewerage pit, so he climbed up and jumped in after it he turned up at the back door of the hut covered in green muck, and we threw things at him until he went away and got in the shower with all his clothes on [laughs] we weren’t going to let him in [laughs] Yeh, I can see that bloke standing there now
CB: How many uniforms did you have? He had to dry it out, first did he?
AG: Er, well, you really had one and a spare which you kept, you kept one, you know, for parades and one thing and another, and a spare, and of course when I became a warrant officer, then I was never short of clothes and it was all extremely smart, and I had more spares than I could cope with
CB: At what stage did you become a warrant officer?
AG: Oh, in my third year, because you went up one rank every year, this is why we had flight lieutenant rear gunner, he’d gone [laughs] gradually up [laughs] anyway
CB: So, you, worked well as a crew?
AG: Oh, yeh, really well
CB: And, erm, how did the food come, if you were flying at night, before you
AG: Well, we had to eat before we went
CB: Right, so what was that
AG: If it was a night flight
CB: Ok, what did you get?
AG: Well, anything that was going, you know, I seem to remember a lot of sausages in those days, I suppose they were easy to come by and easy to make so, they were alright, yeh
CB: Did they keep pigs on the station?
AG: No, not that I ever saw
CB: And, when you landed after an op, what did you get for food?
AG: Eh, well roughly the same thing again, whatever was available, you know, but erm,
CB: Bacon and egg?
AG: Oh yes, yes, we always had that, the only thing that I remember about coming back late one night, before we’d taken off, I’d gone out to the aircraft with a bicycle and had a look round like, as I usually did, and er, when we landed I got on the bike and whizzed off back, and, in the meantime they’d put a barbed wire fence across the bloody path and I rode straight into that and went flying, pitch down, and I got barbed wire cuts all up one arm, and of course, we hadn’t been debriefed or anything, so in between take off and being debriefed, I’d been wounded, I was entitled to a wound stripe, and I thought I shall never have the cheek to wear it, so I didn’t, ‘cos it wasn’t my fault they’d put a barbed wire fence up there
CB: Now, you’ve raised an interesting point there, the wound stripe, how was that allocated and then shown on the uniform?
AG: Well, you had an upside down v, a little red v on the bottom of your left-hand sleeve, I mean I’ve seen
CB: On the wrist?
AG: I saw a bloke once, he’d got fifteen of these all up this arm, so I thought, he must be ruddy unlucky [laughs]
CB: So, this will come as a result of aerial combat of some kind, would it?
AG: Oh yeh, oh yeh
CB: So, how often were you hit and by what?
AG: Well, the only time we were hit, hit badly, was when we were so short of fuel, because they’d absolutely peppered the aircraft, it was full of holes all over, up in, down, and underneath, under the tanks in the wings and everywhere. It was our own fault because we’d arrived ten minutes too late, we blamed the navigator, the rest of the bomber crews had gone on by, so we were flying over Ludwigshafen on our own, we were getting pasted
CB: No fire?
AG: No, fortunately
CB: And er, so that’s flak, so what about fighter attack, how often did you have those?
AG: No, we were lucky, we never had one, ever, [emphasis] although our gunners were ready, but we were lucky to get away with it, particularly when we were doing those Norway trips, ‘cos we’d got no cover there at all, and everything was wide open, you could see our shadow moving across the snow, and this German fighter place up in the north of Denmark, was huge, God knows how many fighters they had there, but we were lucky, we got away with it every time we went to Norway we got away with it without seeing one. The only time we got shot at in Norway, going up the creek to Oslo, and we had to go over Oslo and up into the mountains, to drop this stuff, and in the creek was three islands, one there, one there and one there, and they all had German flak guns on, fortunately, we came in so low that we were leaving a wake up this creek, I looked out and I could see it
CB: On the water?
AG: On the water, and this island was firing at us and hitting the other island, which we thought was quite good [laughs] but when we got to the third one of course, we were just taking a chance, round and round and out quick and after that it was just up over Oslo and into the mountains [pause] interesting, it was only last year that it was in the paper that they found some of this stuff up there that had been dropped, and the people up there never found it
CB: Where they able to find out who had, which aircraft had dropped it?
AG: No, no, they couldn’t find out anything about it at all
CB: So, you said, earlier, that the, Stirling was grossly under-rated, and you thought it was a brilliant aeroplane, what was so special about the Stirling in your perception?
AG: Well, the fact that it was solid metal, you know, it would stand up to practically anything, and only get minor damage, and of course the engines were superb, far better than anything on any of the other aircraft
CB: So, what engines were on the Stirling?
AG: Oh, those Bristol Radials
CB: Hercules
AG: Yeh, I know that we started off with two, two banks of pots and finished up with three, and erm, they were really good, far better than these Merlin engines, ‘cos these would take punishment, the others wouldn’t
CB: Going back to your training, looking at your training manuals, books you filled in, erm, exercise books, when you were training, there, there’s a section on everything but, the significance of the Stirling was it was, it had so much electrics on it, so how well were you prepared at St Athan, for going onto an aircraft that had such a large amount of electrics?
AG: Oh, pretty well, I think I never had any trouble with any of it, the only thing I nearly did one night, was to cook the pigeon, they gave us, in case we came down in the North Sea, and we were sat in a dinghy, there you know, waiting to be rescued, they gave us a pigeon that we could put on out last position and send it off, and I put this pigeon on the floor and I didn’t realise until I got back, that I’d stood it up against this heating pipe that was coming through from one of the engines, I thought the bloody thing will be cooked, but it was perfectly alright, thank goodness [laughs]
CB: Just gone deaf
AG: Well, it must have been warm, which was more than the rest of us were on some of these flights
CB: Where was the warmest part on the aircraft?
AG: At the end of this pipe that was coming through from the inner starboard engine
CB: That was the heater for the fuselage, was it?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: So, what were the things that were electric, driven electrically, on the Stirling?
AG: Well, practically everything, I mean, I’d got a bank of dials in front of me where I was, which were, erm, you know, gave you an indication of how much fuel was in each tank, ‘cos you had one for each tank, starboard and port, and that was all run by electrics, I mean, if you lost your electrics, you’d got no guides at all, that sort of thing, but we never did, fortunately
CB: And, were any of the flying controls electric?
AG: Ah, the only thing that I knew about, that was my job, was the undercarriage, which was electric, down and up, but, erm, if that had failed I could do that by hand take me about half an hour I should think [laughs] ‘cos it was really hard work, but er, that you could do
CB: And, what about the trimmer? so, in the flying controls, were the trimmers electric?
AG: Erm, yes, but that was done either by the co-pilot, the bomb aimer or the pilot, I never had anything to do with that
CB: You said earlier that you had to stand up all the time, but did you have a seat for take-off and landing?
AG: Well, I had to sit on the parachute
CB: Where?
AG: The type of the parachute was the cushion type, with the two, rings at the back, which you just clicked onto your harness, which was there at the front, you just clicked on, yeh that’s right, on the front, [pause] and as it was that sort of thick, and that big, we used to sit on it
CB: Now, thinking now, about the take-off and landing, as the engineer, to what extent, were you involved in helping with the take-off with the throttles?
AG: Not at all, the pilot did it all and I used to watch the dials and make sure that there was nothing I had to tell him
CB: So, were you sitting next to him at that point, or
AG: No, no I was
CB: You were standing?
AG: No, I was either standing, bouncing up and down on me toes or, sat on the parachute looking at all this, wall of dials in front of me
CB: And erm, with most flight engineer tasks, positions, er, logs had to be taken, so,
AG: Oh yeh
CB: What logging did you do and how often?
AG: Well, you had to do one for every flight
CB: But, during the flight, what did you have to record?
AG: Well, if anything went wrong or, we needed something that wasn’t there or whatever, you had to put it in the log, you know, but erm, I never seemed to have any trouble with that, we were lucky really, we really were lucky
CB: From what you have said, fuel management is a key matter, so, of the tanks, in what sequence did you, use for fuel, you’d have one for take-off and then how did you distribute the fuel?
AG: Well, there was two big tanks, number two and number four, in each wing, and you used those for take-off particularly if you were towing a glider because you used a lot of it, and er, once you were up and on a long, fairly longish flight, because we did, we had to go twelve hours sometimes, which took us nearly down to the Swiss border, to supply, Free French that were in the hills there, in the foothills, and erm, as I said, it was, by the time we got back to base again, we’d been out twelve hours
CB: And erm, in terms of the next range of tanks, how did you switch, in what sequence did you use the fuel?
[background noise]
AG: Well, you used the little ones, number one and number two
CB: Which are on the wing tips?
AG: Number one and number three, out, at the far end, you use those first, on both wings, and you tried to keep them going to the engines, you got [pause] like two engines there, and two engines there and you had to keep them going, from the same tanks, pretty well for the same length of time, so you’d know exactly what type of tank was going to be empty, you didn’t have to look at your dial until it went empty, I mean, you had to do it by time, and er, whatever revs were on the engines
CB: And, setting the revs on the engines, and the pitch of the screws, who dealt, did that?
AG: Oh, that was the pilot, did that
CB: Right
AG: And if you didn’t like what he was doing, you had to tell him and he had to alter it
CB: And to what extent was it necessary to synchronise the engines in flight?
AG: Er, not a lot really, we had an extremely good ground crew and normally we found that they’d adjust, perfectly, [pause] because we really relied on our ground crew a lot and we had four really good blokes
CB: And did they come out with you, in the evenings sometimes or did they?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, oh yeh, we thought a lot of those fellas, in fact I gave one of them my bike, when I left, when I was posted away from the squadron, erm, I gave him my bicycle, which I was sad about, but, he deserved it
CB: So, you come to the end of your tour, and you did thirty, thirty-two operations, what did you do after that?
AG: Well, we only had one flight after that because the officer’s mess had run out of beer, we had to fly over to Northern Ireland and bring back a load of beer for them [laughs]
CB: Must have been an arduous trip!
AG: Oh yeh, [laughs] because we’d have liked to have gone on over there and done something, really naughty, because at that time the IRA were building bonfires in the shape of arrows, pointing, to where the aerodrome was
CB: Oh, for German bombers?
AG: That’s right, yeh, bastards [emphasis]
CB: And, how long had they been doing that for?
AG: Practically, since the war started
CB: And how were they dealt with?
AG: Well, they should have been bloody shot, but we never got around to it! It’s like that bloke McGuiness, I mean he’s in the Irish government now, he was the one that started that Bloody Sunday, he was the one on top with the rifle, firing at our troops what did they think, that we weren’t going to fire back? I don’t know, that bastard should have been shot, and you can write that down and put my name on it [laughs]
CB: So, the arrows bit is interesting, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, quite a long time during the war, [pause] yeh, swines
CB: And, what did the beer taste like when you got it back
AG: Oh, that weren’t for us, that was for the officer’s mess, we weren’t allowed to touch it
CB: Didn’t you sample it to make sure it was ok?
AG: No
CB: So, your last flight was keeping them topped up, then what did you do? So, you’ve left the squadron now
AG: Oh, well, I was erm, posted away then, and er, [pause] and finished up at a place called Burnham Beeches
CB: In Buckinghamshire?
AG: Yeh, and erm
CB: What happened there?
AG: Well, nothing really, I don’t think they knew what to do with us, I mean that was where I learnt how to play tennis, one of the blokes there, he’d been champion of Yorkshire for two or three years, and he gave me one of his racquets, and I’ve still got it, I’d still use it, if I played tennis, which I thought was very nice of him, and er, we went rowing on the river there and all sorts of things. As I said they didn’t know what to do with us, we were just keeping out the way
CB: So, we’re after Arnhem now aren’t we, so
AG: Oh yeh
CB: So, what sort of time are we talking about? In the autumn or are we later?
AG: Oh erm, [pause] now, I think I went there if I remember rightly, I went there in er, January, February somewhere like that, fairly early
CB: Forty-five
AG: At Burnham Beeches and we were erm, we’d taken over this big country house that was there, and erm, they just kept the top floor, to live in, and we had the offices all down below, and er, working in there
CB: Doing what?
AG: Well, I was sat in the office there, and it was a most peculiar effort, if they, had a man posted from Edinburgh to Glasgow, an RAF policeman, he had to come all the way down to us, be booked into my office and booked out again, and given travel warrants and away he went, most peculiar efforts, still there you are, you wondered who was running these things sometimes
CB: And then after, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, I think I was there for about erm, three or four months [background noise] and then I was posted to Leicester
CB: Leicester East? The airfield, Leicester East?
AG: Oh no, no, no, no, just somewhere in Leicester, erm, and erm, I was there for about a fortnight or so I think, and then I went back to Burnham Beeches and got discharged, and went to London and picked up my civvies
CB: Then what? So, you’re discharged, demobbed, what did you do then?
AG: Well, I went home and had a week off and then I went back to work for the Danish Bacon company, shit house firm
[background laughter]
CB: Would you like to explain why they were like that? What was it that was so upsetting about the Danish Bacon
AG: Well, because I’d
CB: Company
AG: Been here for nearly forty years, until I got another job and I wanted to take my pension and money, put it into this new firm and they were going to treat it as though I’d been there all the time, so I’d have had a really good pension when I did eventually retire, but they wouldn’t do it, they made me take all the money out and it was only what I’d paid in, nothing of theirs, and I had to take it out as my last week’s wages and the income tax was unbelievable, not a nice firm, fortunately, they went out of business after that
CB: Right, so
AG: It went broke
CB: When did you leave them?
AG: Ah, [pause] I’m scratching for the year, [pause] I can’t remember to be honest
CB: So, you left the RAF in forty-five
AG: Yeh
CB: How long did you stay with the Danish Bacon people?
AG: Er, oh another [pause] eight or nine years
CB: Then what?
AG: Then I got this offer of this new job
CB: At?
AG: Patrick Grainger and Hutley’s, at Fordingbridge
CB: What were you doing there?
AG: I was assistant manager and I was also travelling round, seeing some of their customers, and building up trade of course
CB: Ok, we’ll just have a break there, thank you
CB: So, you kept staying, kept with Patrick Grainger, who’d then been taken over by Danish Bacon until you retired after forty years. We are now going back to flying, so when you were flying Allen, as the engineer, you had to log various things because it was important to see how the plane was performing. What were you logging?
AG: Well, if you have a look at this, its erm, oil pressure, oil temperatures and cylinder temperatures
CB: Right, ok, and how often were you doing that? Did you have to do it at a particular time? Every hour?
AG: Yeh, well, this, if you look at the times down the left-hand side, its roughly about every fifteen minutes, I think
CB: Right
AG: But, I had another line, right the way across
CB: Yeh, so, when you got back, you, the aircraft lands, we didn’t get on to debrief, but, you’re the engineer, when you get out of the aircraft, who’s the first person you speak to, is that the Chiefy?
AG: Erm
CB: Your ground engineer?
AG: No, I wouldn’t see anybody until I got back into the debriefing hut
CB: Ok, so at debriefing, what would you be doing?
AG: Well, I had to hand my log in
CB: Right
AG: And erm,
CB: That you’d been completing in the flight?
AG: That’s right, yeh this one
CB: Yeh, ok, and then what, who was the person that looked at that?
AG: Well, they used to take them all away, and erm, if I remember rightly, it was the chap who was in charge of all the, erm, maintenance and all that stuff, he’d go through it, and any anomalies he’d then probably come, and ask you what happened then and [unclear]
CB: This would be the station engineering officer?
AG: Yeh
CB: Who would be dealing with all of that or one of his erm, people?
AG: Well, it was a bloke in charge of erm, all the ground crews
CB: Yeh, yeh
AG: He’d want to see that
CB: Now, would you then join the rest of the crew for the crew debriefing, what would happen?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, we would all go and sit down together
CB: Where would that be and who would you see?
AG: Well, the CO would be there and a couple of his underlings and erm, they’d just go through the whole thing, right from the take off and erm, and talk to the pilot about what happened here and what happened there, and did he have any trouble, and went right through and made sure that we’d put either the bombs in the right place or erm, or supplied the people that were in the exact same spot that they were supposed to be in, because sometimes all you would get was one bloke flashing a morse letter on his torchP particularly if we were on one of those Norway trips, we used to go miles over the snow, and there would be some poor bugger right up in the mountains, with his torch, and then we would drop all these containers down there, so, what they did with them after that I don’t know, whether they towed them away or what
CB: So, the debrief, covers all the aspects of the flight?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: And, bearing in mind in many cases, your, you were a special duties squadron, so you were supplying SOE, to what extent were there SOE people there, during the debrief?
AG: Well, we assumed that, you know, there would be one or two officers there that we didn’t know where they come from, so it would have been them
CB: They were the air force officers?
AG: Yeh, it was either SOE or SAS
CB: Right
AG: Yeh
CB: What was the most memorable thing about your operational career, on operations?
AG: Oh, that one when we just got back with hardly any fuel, [laughs] the only thing that stands out in my mind
CB: Now, the aircraft had been peppered, pretty badly, why was it, it didn’t catch fire?
AG: Well, it was the way they were built, this is why we like the Stirling’s, there was nothing there to catch fire
CB: Did you have self-sealing fuel tanks?
AG: Well, up to a certain point but, that time we got caught with it, I mean, it had blown a hole about that big and of course that self-sealing didn’t work, over that size
CB: But the tank was empty anyway?
AG: Well, yeh, I ran all four engines on it, until I could see there was nothing left, and just went switching from one to another, then eking it out as well as I could, until we got back, right [hand clap] good
CB: Finally, where did you meet your wife?
AG: Ah, when I was at St Athans
CB: And what was she doing there?
AG: Well, she was doing this erm, mechanics training course, which she finished up doing, erm, I don’t think she was ever on, erm, an operating squadron, er, she was at this aerodrome down by Exeter, I went down there to see her once or twice, and erm, you know, that was it
CB: Was she on the flight line looking after the aircraft, or in the hangar?
AG: Oh, both, because erm, the only thing she ever moaned about it was the fact that they were working out in the rain, with no cover and erm, the only way they could get dry was to go in and stand with all their clothes on by this coke stove, get it red hot and stand there and hope their clothes dried, which is why she finished up with really bad arthritis in her legs, I reckon, because of that
CB: So, when did you meet her, oh you met her when you were at St Athan
AG: Yeh
CB: When did you marry?
AG: Oh, about er, about ten years later [pause] I can’t remember what year it was that we got married, no idea
CB: Sounds like about nineteen fifty-three?
AG: Hmm, probably, somewhere around there [background talking] yeh, one thing I should remember and I don’t
CB: Thank you very much
AG: Oh, it’s alright sir
CB: On the minelaying, you were talking about, so this is, the other side, having to fly the other side of Denmark
AG: Yeh
CB: How did that raid go, were you high up and then went down or, and how did you do the mining run
AG: Well, it was our first op that was, erm, well it was just a question of relying on the navigator, ‘cos I didn’t know where we were going, and erm, anyway, we had to come down really low, off this island I think it was called [unclear] Byrum [?] and er, drop these mines right across the erm, entrance to the harbour. If anything had come in there, they would have gone off, so, and then we came back, and flew up between the other side of Denmark and Sweden, and watched all Sweden being lit up, lights on the piers and all the way along the sea front, looked beautiful, we ain’t seen anything like that for years
CB: And then you were, we’ve got a picture here, of your, aircraft, on the flight line ready for take-off for Arnhem, so, could you talk us through that one?
AG: Well, erm
CB: What were you carrying?
AG: Well, the first day was alright, we were just carrying supplies, the only thing that buggered up Arnhem was the Americans, again, as usual. Erm, our troops took the first bridge, the Americans were supposed to take the second one, and we dropped our troops on the third one, and they’re the ones we were supplying, and erm, of course the Americans made a cock of it and couldn’t take theirs, which left our blokes on the third bridge sticking out on their own, and unfortunately, the intelligence was so bad, that nobody realised that, just a little way, away from there, there was, a big mass of Germans, who had taken back for a rest from the Russian front, and they had got their tanks and everything there, and our blokes on the third bridge didn’t stand a chance. They were gradually surrounded, erm, we went over there again and dropped more supplies, but the third day when we went over there, we didn’t realise but we were dropping to the Germans, and that we were sitting ducks at that height, fortunately, our pilot decided not to climb away and leave us vulnerable, he went down even further, and went in between the two milk factory chimneys and came out over the sea, clever bloke
CB: At what height were you dropping?
AG: Oh, about five hundred feet
CB: And how much stuff did you drop, it was in containers with parachutes, was it?
AG: No, it was all in, yeh, it was all in containers with parachutes, because we were, the first and second time actually dropping to our troops, it was the third time when we weren’t and didn’t realise it
CB: What was in the containers?
AG: Oh, small arms and food and supplies, and all that sort of thing
CB: Right, anything else? Good, thank you
AG: And we were erm, the planes were being loaded up, for supplies to the French, in some area, and er, we were walking out and one of the containers fell out the plane, and hit the ground, so we all went flat, so we thought knowing what was likely to be in them. Anyway, when the dust had settled and they hadn’t gone off, we walked over and had a look in this container, half of it was full of socks and the other half was full of durex, and I thought the French don’t need those [laughter] and they don’t use them anyway, [laughter] and I thought well, that’s a bloody fine thing, we are risking our necks taking over socks [emphasis] and anyway [laughter] that’s what wars all about I suppose
CB: They’d say that’s what they put in them before they chucked it
AG: Yeh, I’d forgotten, yeh, I’d forgotten about that, and I suddenly thought about this thing dropping down, and we all dived flat, because we reckoned it was going to blow up, but it didn’t, and we walked over to have a look, and that what was in it, socks and durex [laughs]
[Other] That’s the first time I’d heard Dad be angry about the Americans
AG: They were normally shit scared and badly trained
CB: The Americans?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right, erm, thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGouldAG160708
Title
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Interview with Allen Geoffrey Gould
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:10:32 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-07-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Gould grew up in Bournemouth and worked for the Danish Bacon company until volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford. Post war, he married his wife, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. He returned to the Danish Bacon company and worked there for another forty years.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Norway
Wales
England--Gloucestershire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Chris Cann
620 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
mine laying
RAF Fairford
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/267/3417/AHallettB161122.1.mp3
beedd47aeb8a53dc6459daa7cbc6ecf0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hallett, Bill
Bill Hallett
B Hallett
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Bill Hallett (1587281 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hallett, B
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: Right, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean McCartney and the interviewee is Bill Hallett. Also with us today is Bill’s wife, Edna. The interview is taking place at Mr Hallett and Mrs Hallett’s home at Pottsville in New South Wales on the 22nd of November 2016. OK Bill, let’s start at the beginning, 1922. You were born in Over Wallop. Is that how you say it?
BH: Yes, that’s true but it’s probably registered as being Andover.
JM: Right.
BH: But it’s.
JM: Right, all your early years spent around that area or?
BH: My younger years was in this little place of Over Wallop but then we moved to Andover which was ten miles away.
JM: Right. So your schooling was there?
BH: Um. My schooling was really in Over Wallop and Nether Wallop and yeah, so um.
JM: Right.
BH: Moved to Andover mainly so my sister and I could get a job.
JM: Right. And when you left school, what, where did you, what sort of jobs did you go into? ‘Cause I’m assuming you were working before you went into the services? Or when did you enlist?
BH: I was working with, for a gentleman that was in charge of the maintenance of Tidworth Barracks. And I was working with him. And going on as I increased with age with that, and War started and all these sorts of things. And he got me an exemption from call-up because of the work that I was doing with him. And then because some of my friends were joined up and was going the only way I could sort of move and get out of that exemption was to volunteer for aircrew in the RAF. That was the only way. So I done that. I didn’t explain anything to him until it was too late for him to do anything about it. So that’s where it was. That’s when my service started.
JM: Right. And what year would that have been?
BH: Ah, I guess it’s 1942.
JM: Right ’42, yeah. And where did you do your initial training?
BH: My? Not sure about that either, I can’t remember. That was just a thing where everybody had to go to. It was sort of a thing that introduced you to the forces.
JM: Um.
BH: Then I moved from there to Cosford in the Midlands to do a mechanics’ course and then I stayed there and done a fitters’ course on engines. From then on I moved over to, I think it was, I don’t know my memory’s not that good about those little things, but I think it was Stradishall where we just formed up and we chose, we had the right to choose a crew because it was a centre point where everybody, bomb aimers, navigators, pilots and all these things came in there. So that was the start of the thing when we were training started at Stradishall.
JM: At Stradishall? Yeah, OK. And what training did you do there?
BH: It was mainly on flying. When a crew was selected and got their guy. It was mainly training on Stirlings.
JM: Um.
BH: The Stirling aircraft.
JM: Were you in one of the, which sort of role were you in?
BH: I was an engineer, flight engineer.
JM: Engineer the flight engineer? Yeah, right OK.
BH: Um.
JM: And so what, were you with any of your mates that you’d sort of been able to join up at the same, that had been around?
BH: No. They were all.
JM: Scattered around.
BH: All sort of strangers to start with.
JM: Yeah.
BH: But there we just flew and done circuits and bumps as they called it.
JM: Um.
BH: Just flying around landing and taking off.
JM: Yeah.
BH: Then we’d go on sort of trips around the country. Then we done some night flying with it and then later on we started on operations. Do you want me to carry right through now?
JM: Well, you do.
BH: Well, it was just then that was.
JM: How you.
BH: That was with 4 Squadron.
JM: Yes.
BH: Then later on that squadron was changed from Stirlings to Fortresses, the American Fortresses.
JM: American Fortresses, yeah.
BH: I think we were the only squadron doing that, flying a foreign aircraft. So then we had to do training with that.
JM: Yes.
BH: New things. And then after that well we didn’t do any bombing at all, we were just carrying a specialised crew. And we’d go off and get up to, in those days the great height of thirty three thousand feet, and fly over the top of everyone else. And then we had this German speaking wireless operator on board and we used to sort of handle a bit of windows and that sort of thing to confuse the radar of the Germans that sort of thing. I never got involved with that because when we moved to the Fortress I, I became second pilot which sort of made me a little bit happier because when I joined up that was the reason I’d joined up was to become a pilot.
JM: To become a pilot, right.
BH: But when the engineer thing came along they just came up and said ‘We’ve got too many pilots at the moment, we want other crew members.’ So I had a choice of joining everything other but I chose an engineer because I , I knew so much about motors and that sort of thing.
JM: And that was, air force engines were more interesting than army or navy engines?
BH: Yeah, it was those, ‘cause when I joined up it was the old piston type engines. That applied with the Fortress they were the same kind of engine, not the same make. Oh yeah I got into that so I slotted into that very easy and we done a number of trips over there and we were quite happy because we didn’t see any fighters, we didn’t have any flak because we were too high.
JM: Um. So these were actual missions flying over Germany was it?
BH: Um.
JM: So.
BH: So we would normally get to the target before the others. And the wireless operator, I might add at that moment everything was so secretive. Nobody knew what was really going on, although we were talking to the special wireless operator there, that was in there, but I guess he was told not to divulge anything what he was doing.
JM: Um.
BH: It’s only since a gentleman has started to write a biography about myself that he’s delved into it and found out all these things, what it was doing. But the Fortress was never designed for night flying so the super chargers were operating in the exhaust part of it which showed up very clearly at night time with the four dots in the air. And then when the brilliant person that said we’d fly over Holland to a motor place in Antwerp at six thousand feet we thought that was, before we took off, we thought well that was going to be it because we were just sort of sitting there like [unclear] ducks ‘cause everyone would have seen us at six thousand feet from the ground. So that was the way it happened, and we just got shot down.
JM: Shot down um.
BH: And, yeah but.
JM: And what, when, what date was that?
BH: It was in May ’44.
JM: May ’44 right.
BH: And yeah. It then, as I said it just was a happier time for me then, ‘cause my pilot he said ‘Well what’s the use of having a second pilot if he doesn’t know how to fly and land the thing’ if he got sick or injured. So from then on he took it into his control to ensure that I, that I could handle the aircraft. Because the RAF in their wisdom never gave a second pilot any manual.
JM: Training.
BH: So, that made me a lot happier. I used to fly the thing around with him and under his control for a while until he considered me efficient to do it and so I as quite happy then. But from that date of course, that’s when the trouble started. We just got down and then became a prisoner of war. I could go on a lot with the real detail but I don’t know whether you want to do that ‘cause.
JM: Well you can go.
[External noise -helicopter]
JM: We just paused a second there because we had a helicopter in the background, it seems to have gone again so we’ll continue on. We were at the point where you’d been getting some more, you’d been getting the flying as second pilot and then but then unfortunately in the May of ’44 that you were shot down over Holland?
BH: Um, and one of the those things because the navigator said we were thirty miles off the coast so we assumed there was going to be land when we came on but when we did come down we came down in the flooded part of Holland and when we, one other crew got together and come round, got up and went to a house and they were quite friendly and said ‘Yes’ they’d help us because the system of getting back to England was getting starting to get very strong then on the Continent so we thought it was but then afterwards we spent the night with them and they were drying our clothes, we found out afterwards that they had already contacted the Germans that we were there. And we were quite angry because if they couldn’t have helped they could have let us go probably onto someone else. But afterwards when things got back to normal we were down there we found out that these people that lived there they were on a death notice if they helped anything so after that we just forgot but at that time both of us decided we were going to go back after the War and have a go at these people but we never did because of the threat that they lived under. So then it was just a matter of moving from one place to another in prisoner of war camps. We eventually got taken up to a camp in Breslau, which was up in the Polish border and we settled there for a while. And then the Russians were coming down, advancing down on the thing, so later on they decided to get us on a forced march away from the Russians. And that’s when we experienced the real cold weather. It was reputed to be minus fifty degrees when we were out one time.
JM: And I presume you didn’t have much in the way of clothing to protect you from the elements?
BH: No, we didn’t have the sort of set things you’d expect to have, big coats and that sort of thing but it was an amazing thing we had a balaclava on because of the breathing on there it just got like a piece of wood, breathing out all the time and you could sort of knock it, so hard, and after that we were marching for about three weeks I guess until eventually we ended up going to a place just south of Berlin. We got on, ‘cause we got on a train which delivered us down there. And it was that place where we were eventually released by the Russians then Americans came to pick us all up and the Russians said ‘No, you’re not going to pick ‘em up.’ So they under fire or something made the Americans leave and we were left stranded there for some time. And eventually the Russians got some trucks and took us to a place. I have all this down in the diary but I can’t remember just off. Then they, they met up with American trucks at this place and eventually that was it. We got released and got back to England.
JM: What time, roughly what sort of time was that?
BH: Almost twelve months to the day.
JM: Almost twelve months?
BH: To the day yeah we got back.
JM: So May ’45 before you got back?
BH: Yeah. Yeah, as I said there’s a lot more details that I had because I kept a diary going in there and I think I just said to you this guy is making, tells me it’s gone to a publisher now, my biography. And all this is, all this is listed down so it’s yeah. But as far as remembering it and talking to you it’s a bit difficult.
JM: That’s alright, no you’re doing fine. So when you got back in May ’44 what, you wouldn’t have been discharged straight away, I presume? I would presume that they, you did some other things before you were discharged?
BH: Yes I.
JM: May ’45 i should say, my apologies.
BH: Think we were given six week’s leave if I can remember. So we went home and then I’d already met Edna prior to that, she lived in Wolverhampton. My parents lived down south in Andover so I used to travel between the two during my leave. And then eventually we went back to some place, I can’t remember that, I did get a discharge. And that was a discharge on the grounds of being a POW. That was it. It’s funny how things go. I suppose I’d been reasonably fortunate in some things on there but while, while I had to bail out, bailed out from the front hatch but the wireless operator forgot to wind in the trailing area which was an area which had lead weights on it. And as I went out I tangled up with and sort of wrenched myself and ever since then I’ve suffered with a back complaint. Now, being young and I wanted to get back to now my wife to see her, I just, they asked if you had any disabilities or anything unfortunately I said ‘No’, I just wanted to get out and that was it. That was one of the bad things looking back on that I didn’t do. So from then I’ve suffered with it but I’m still lucky in a way that I’m still able to carry on a little bit. I did get onto the Government over in England saying about my issues about it. No ,they didn’t have any ,they said they had no reciprocal things with Australia for things and if I had injury or something I could apply for a pension. I didn’t really want a pension I just wanted some little bit of security for my health that went on but there was just nothing going from them about it. Then when things were happening here as I mentioned where Australia rewarded people for being prisoner of war and being on the forced march and doing that I again contacted the British Legion over there to ask if there was any system or scheme going to help things but no there was nothing so at that time I just gave up with a feeling that I didn’t, with a feeling that I didn’t have much sympathy with British Government.
JM: Yes well I’m afraid I’m of no, have no information to offer at this point that could assist you in that regards. So, the chap that you were with when you went into that first house after you, when bailed out, did you stay with him all the way through?
BH: Yes.
JM: Were you through until you actually sort of released by the Russians?
BH: Yeah. All of the crew excepting the pilot and the wireless operator, mid-upper gunner, which I said to you, now you look on it and sort of feeling the reason why he wouldn’t jump, jump out of the aircraft, because he was scared. He was, I mean we never had any real training on what to do with that sort of thing. It was just a matter of survival when you looked at the aircraft with a wing burning. I applied all the fire extinguishers but they made no effect. It was just getting worse. It appeared to be white hot and it was quite obvious that it was going to drop off at any time. Excepting for those two, the crew did get together and we sort of ended up in the same camp but funny enough it ‘cause systems you were always segregated, you could never keep together. And I sort of never really contacted any of them after I got demobbed. Even though coming to Australia I didn’t know because my wife and we had a daughter then, made a special trip to the relatives of the pilot because I was really friendly with him, I considered him a real mate.
JM: So the pilot was Australian?
BH: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
BH: So I thought, and we had taken pictures of him in my sort of spare time and I thought it would have been nice to give them to his mother or something in Sydney. Anyhow as I said we had a wife and daughter. So we stopped in Sydney and found somewhere to sort of stay and travelled out to this area where he was. So we went out with this parcel, feeling very proud of myself for doing this. But I was met by the door I guess by some relation of his and she said ‘Oh yeah that’s nice, thank you very much. Oh well have a good day.’ And that was it, so I had no contact with his mother or anything at that time. So from then on I never bothered to make any contact, no. Then we travelled up to Murwillumbah where my wife Edna had relations up there. And we went to Murwillumbah and that was it. But it was not until I found out later that the ordinary wireless operator in the crew, Tommy Larr, lived in Repton which was just a short distance away from Coffes Harbour. And in the job that I had I used to travel to Coffes Harbour pretty regularly. It was sort of one of those things. You thought Well, gee I was down there next door to him and didn’t even know, know him.’ Yeah so, unfortunately I found out through another source that he died. One of the, one of the nephews of Peter Hockley, Alan Hockley I should say, who was the pilot who lived in Sydney. His nephew is, he’s sort of writing a story, including the things of, the person his uncle or whatever it was. And he wrote a complete story up and he was keeping in touch with me and I gave him all the information that I had. I, he got my diary, and he took a fair bit of the things on there. I think he’s still got that going. Strange I can’t remember his name. Wouldn’t know it, I’ve got it on the computer. But yeah, really the experiences of others have been covered prior, it was over. So yeah, we’ve lived in Murwillumbah until I retired from work and then we moved down and bought this place were we have now in the, and been living here ever since.
JM: Right, so just backtracking a bit. So, you said you came out in 1951?
BH: Yeah.
JM: So ,you obviously had decided that you wanted to come, what was the motivation to come to Australia do you think?
BH: It was mainly my wife. All her mother and father had moved out here.
JM: Oh, OK right.
BH: And she had three, four, brothers out here. And they were all living in the Marumba area.
JM: Right.
BH: That was the main thing. Plus, plus after I found out certain things I thought life over in Australia would be a lot better than in England with the weather and such things as that, which has proved to be quite true. So, I’ve never, even though I left behind my mother and father and sister, I’ve never really regretted moving over to Australia. It’s been a great place. I did go back once to see my mother, after my father died. But I couldn’t afford to go back to his funeral because in those days air travel was very expensive.
JM: Horrendously expensive. That’s right.
BH: So, I missed out on there but I did go back to see my mother and sister. Yeah, so it’s been a good sort of life here but. I have two daughters which are healthy and they’ve done pretty well for themselves.
JM: What work did you go into when you got here? Well, to Murwillumbah I should say.
BH: Yeah. Well I started off, because when I left the RAF in England I was working as a maintenance fitter in Walsall, that’s near Wolverhampton. So, we came out with the idea of finding work. But because at the place that I had, a friend of one of my boss’s over in England he had a friend in an aircraft factory in Sydney. So he contacted them. And because I had the mechanical knowledge they offered me a job when I got here after an interview. So when we stopped in Sydney, with the thing, I went out to Bankstown where it was, it was De Havilland.
JM: De Havilland yeah.
BH: Went out there for interview and it was quite good. And they said well ‘Once you’ve settled down.’ ‘Cause I said I wanted to go, the wife wanted to go up to see her family in Murwillumbah. And they said ‘Well when you come back come back and see us and we’ll find you a job here.’ Well after coming up to Murwillumbah, just living that short time in Sydney, coming to Murwillumbah where people were taking me fishing and doing all the things as normal, I said ‘I don’t want to go back to Sydney.’ So, then I couldn’t find a job as a maintenance fitter up here. There were only the sugar mills really that were eligible. That meant that I’d have to go Brisbane and that didn’t appeal to us. So, I started off driving a laundry truck around. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me ‘cause I got to know so many people. And soon after that, when I’d done there I got offered a job in the Banana Groves Federation and I just went there in the store for a while and then they offered the Transport Manager’s position. So, I stayed on there. And in those days it was very big. A very big thing, sending bananas to Coffes Harbour to Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. And it was quite an involved sort of situation. So I stayed there until I retired.
JM: And that was? Would that have been in the ‘80’s sometime or other? Or ‘90’s?
BH: At those times I could retire at sixty.
JM: Right.
BH: But at that time I was enjoying my job and it was sort of thing. So I left it to sixty one and a half and then I decided I might just as well retire. But I would have to go back and think. So that was when I was sixty. So, yeah it was in the.
JM: Mid ‘80’s sometime?
BH: Yeah. In early ‘80’s I guess, it was um.
JM: Yeah.
BH: Take that time off my age and somebody would find out what it was. So yeah.
JM: And did you then stay in Murwillumbah for a little while before you came over here to Pottsville? Or did you?
BH: Yes. We had a house in Murwillumbah and then we bought this place down here ‘cause I was pretty keen on fishing. We used to come down here and go fishing. And we spent a lot of time repairing it and modernising it a bit. My daughters hated it because in that time it was an isolated place here. But now they have different ideas of course. But in those days it was really fun because I had a vehicle that travelled on the beach, fishing and it was a really good time of my life. Before. And then when I retired we bought a caravan and we spent, kept going caravanning, on and off for a couple of years. Travelled round Australia and Darwin a couple of times and all this, Edna and I loved that, so yeah we really had a good life.
JM: It’s magnificent that the North Coast cannot be beaten basically is the bottom line.
EH: Is this your life story?
JM: Chalk and cheese.
EH: Well what’s it being written for?
BH: It’s alright only for mainly about me on Bomber Command that’s all.
JM: Bomber Command yeah.
EH: Well you finished that a long time ago.
BH: That’s right.
JM: So, in terms of keeping. You said you didn’t keep up with anyone else but you obviously came across George Anderson at some point I guess, obviously you both being in Murwillumbah there?
BH: Yeah, I can’t remember just where George and I met but we’ve sort of been in, we having been living in one and other’s pockets, but we’ve sort of kept in touch with one another. I can’t really remember where we sort of met, but yeah. So it’s, he’s lived in Murwillumbah and we’ve sort of lived down here.
JM: Yeah. That’s right. Well George, he would have been there for some of the time you were in Murwillumbah.
BH: Oh yeah, yeah.
JM: Yeah.
BH: As I said I can’t remember where I sort of met him, it was, I’ve never sort of advertised around that I was in the forces, or aircrew or what, so most of the people round wouldn’t even know.
JM: No.
BH: Only George probably would know.
JM: Would know, right. As a fellow traveller sort of thing having.
BH: Yeah.
JM: No, it’s certainly a difficult time that you had there in your service so yeah it’s.
BH: Yeah, it was as I say I just thought that, thought that the Government over there could have sort of helped people. But I guess there’s so many in the.
EH: Wasn’t it work that you could go and study for over in England?
BH: Yeah, that.
EH: Yeah study in tech, pick up a career?
BH: Yeah, I’m sure they offered that because they did sort of pay for my passage out here. I didn’t sort of emigrate, I was sort of, they covered the cost of that, which I thought that was the best thing. [laughs]
JM: And that presumably was by ship?
BH: Yeah, it was. It was a good trip and then I think it took us five weeks to get here. Because not like other immigrants who were given some money, we had a proper passport so we could get off the boat wherever it docked, so we sort quite a few places around the. All with different names now like Port Said and some of these other ones, what do they call that?
JM: Columbo?
BH: Columbo. That’s right that was one. Don’t know what they call that, what do they call that now?
JM: I forget.
BH: But that was an enjoyable time when we come out here. It was sort of magnificent really. We met up with a Catholic priest. And we weren’t Catholic but we just met up with him going on there. And he used to go with us when we went off the boat and he used to show us around because he’d done it before and then we, yeah. Pretty lucky with the things around.
JM: Were there other ex service personnel on, I know that quite a lot of the boat was probably immigrants, were there other ex service?
BH: Didn’t know of any.
JM: No. There was nothing to sort of, yeah? Didn’t make any particular contact with anyone during the time you were travelling out that you became aware of them being ex service?
BH: No, I didn’t really. There was, you know we met up with lots of people of course, but none of them had anything relative about the services at all.
BH: Yeah so. It’s been pretty good and we’re sort of lucky that we’ve reached the age we have now.
JM: Yes you’ve certainly done very well. Good North Coast air that’s what it is. [emphatic]
BH: Yeah it must be Jean. Yeah we’re so lucky. Even though I’m my age I’m still driving and having got any limited licences or anything so I can still do that which we get around about still. You know this is a funny sort of area. We got involved with the Pottsville Neighbour Centre because one of our daughters works there. She’s sort of, you could almost say she’s second-in-command I suppose. That’s been brilliant ‘cause we meet so many people, that’s been brilliant because we sort of go down there and Edna’s been in the op shop and I’ve been out with the furniture and seeing where things are, it’s been most enjoyable. Yeah so.
JM: Um.
BH: Yes, [unclear].
JM: Very satisfying life by the sounds of it?
BH: [laughs] Yeah. We have one daughter that lives up the Sunshine Coast. She has four boys and now of course they’re all married and have children so we have about six great-great grandchildren now. And they come down here to visit us quite often ‘cause we have this, and close to the beach.
JM: That’s right, yeah. And what’s the name of the chap that’s writing up your biography?
BH: Jesus, [exhalation of breath].
JM: That’s on the computer isn’t it? So we can get it off the computer?
BH: Yeah.
JM: That’s OK so.
BH: It’s um. Yeah, as I said he give me a DVD of the thing so far. It’s been adjusted since then. The reason it slowed down, just used to live across here. He was a jeweller and he used to write books as a hobby. And then he came on, talking to me a bit and then he asked me if he could do it. And that’s the way it started. Debb is his second name. Daniel, Daniel Debb. Yeah, well he used to do work up the Gold Coast, jeweller, and then his mother got sick and they lived in [unclear] so he decided to pack up here and go back and live with his mother and that. Since then he said he’s had to take three months off from looking at the book because of conditions down there with his mother. And he’s had to travel to Sydney to get work as a jeweller. He rang me up two weeks ago and said that he hopes to start again on it. He’s very excited about it but I’m not. It’s, I think there’s been so many biographies given out on something but he’s, he feels quite adamant that it’ll be a success. ‘Cause it’s sort of listed from when I grew up as a little kid in this Over Wallop, through to Andover, to all this. So it’s all covered on that, that sort of thing, yeah. So we’ve just got to wait until that comes out, but the way he’s going I’ll be lucky if I survive it. [laughs]
JM: Well, see how it goes. You look pretty hale and healthy at the moment so that’s good. Alright, well we might wrap it up at this point. You’re happy with that, there’s nothing else?
BH: Yeah OK.
JM: Nothing coming to mind that you wanted to particularly mention at all?
BH: I don’t think so. I think it’s briefly cut it down, I mean there’s lots of things happened when we were prisoners of war but there not relative now, so, as I said it’s in the diary but I’ve never discussed it very much.
EH: You’ve never even told the girls.
BH: No, not much about it.
EH: And then you’re opening up to a stranger.
BH: No.
EH: Yes. Got it all down on there.
BH: Edna’s got some funny ideas but she, yeah. They’ve always said that they wanted some recognition of my life story so that’s why when this Daniel Debb when he sort of said this, they’d get a copy of it when it comes back so that’s why it started from when I was younger. Gone through, as I said, to when I met Edna and going back from home living in Wolverhampton.
JM: Yeah. What service medals were you, have you got? Do you know off the top of your head?
BH: It was the, I got the ordinary medals that came in. Then I got a later one, don’t know what it was.
EH: Service overseas?
BH: Yeah, but because of the feeling that I had about the Government over there with what was a, quite frankly I wouldn’t even know where my medals are. My daughter could have them, I don’t know, but yeah.
JM: Do you remember if you have a ’39 – ’45 star?
BH: Yeah I did get that.
JM: Right, OK. And what about, are you aware of the Bomber Command clasp?
BH: Yeah, I’ve got that.
JM: You’ve got that?
BH: My daughter got it for me.
JM: Oh OK, right.
BH: Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I was expecting too much? But when the medals came out the actual aircrew medal was exactly the same as a ’39 – ’49 star with the exception of the colour of the ribbon. And I thought ‘Gee that’s strange’ because there’s not much recognition between the two. It was, yeah, so I still, I still occasionally go the RSL Club, I used to go to the one in [unclear]and then when I came back here I’d go to the one at Pottsville but it doesn’t, it doesn’t hold the same feeling as what the people do that go on that are over from Australia ‘cause most of them are on [unclear] or something like this. The Government tends to help them but I’m sitting here like a woolly duck still here talking about these things.
JM: Um. Alright, well I thank you very much for your time Bill, it’s been greatly appreciated and thank you indeed.
BH: Well, good luck with your thing.
JM: Thank you.
BH: From what I hear of it all you’re going to get out of it is the satisfaction that you helped out to.
JM: Well, it’s important that everyone’s story is recorded. That’s the important thing because the recognition hasn’t been there. This is now small steps towards getting that recognition in place. So that it can’t be changing what’s gone in the past but it can change for the future. So.
BH: Yeah. Well as I said I was known over there as Walter William Charles Hallett, soon as I stepped foot in Australia I just became William Hallett. The other names are forgotten, thank God.
JM: Yeah. Very good. Well once again thank you very much. Thank you.
BH: Would you like?
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AHallettB161122
Title
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Interview with Bill Hallett
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:52:01 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2016-11-22
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Hallett was born in Over Wallop in 1922. He joined the RAF in 1942 despite having an exemption due to the work he was doing at Tidworth Barracks. He flew operations in Stirlings and B-17s as a flight engineer with 214 Squadron. Rather than bombing, their role was to jam enemy transmissions. His aircraft was shot down over Holland and he became a prisoner of war After he and his wife Edna moved to Australia where he became a delivery driver before joining the Banana Groves Federation where he worked until his retirement aged sixty-one.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
214 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
bale out
flight engineer
prisoner of war
RAF Stradishall
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/301/3458/PMcPhersonGM1604.2.jpg
dd2ac1eb4ebcb48c7080f69f18d8bec1
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/301/3458/AMcPhersonGM160221.1.mp3
0b7ecf8569165bee4f966dd6ad59e791
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
McPherson, Gerald
Gerald Murray McPherson
Gerald M McPherson
Gerald McPherson
G M McPherson
G McPherson
Description
An account of the resource
Four items An oral history interview with Gerald Murray McPherson (430468 Royal Australian Air Force) and his flying log book and two photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Gerald Murray McPherson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-02-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McPherson, GM
Transcribed audio recording
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command centre’s digital archives with Gerald McPherson, a rear gunner with 186 Squadron during World War Two, the interview is taking place at Gerald’s home in Box Hill, in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell and the date is the twenty-first of February twenty sixteen. So, Gerald, we’ll start if you like with er, well at the beginning, erm, tell me something of your early life, where you grew up and early education, and things like that
GM: I was born in Dimboola in Victoria on the fourteenth of November nineteen twenty-four, and er, moved to Horsham when I was five and did all my schooling at Horsham [pause] what else do you want to?
AP: Ok, well, I’m sorry, what were you er?
GM: I was one of er, seven boys and er, one girl in the family, three of us were in the, air force, one was a dive bomber pilot, my eldest brother, another was a rear gunner on a Halifax and myself
AP: What were you doing before the war though, what first job and things like that?
GM: I joined the Bank of Australasia, in nineteen forty, and moved to Neale in nineteen forty-one, and in nineteen forty-two I was called up to the air force [pause] nineteen forty-three, January forty three
AP: Did you have any prior military service, for that?
GM: No, just air training, I was in the Air Training Corp
AP: Ah, what did that involve?
GM: I was just going to lectures on maths and that sort of thing
AP: Ok, um
GM: I also learnt er, [pause] morse code, and er, my brother was a telegraphist, and fortunately he taught me morse code
AP: Excellent, um, why did you enlist in the air force, why did you pick the air force?
GM: Ah, my two elder brothers had already joined the air force, and I felt I’d rather do that then foot slog [laughs]
AP: Sounds, sounds quite reasonable, erm, what about, alright, so, having decided to join the air force then, erm, can you tell me something about the enlistment process, what you had to do, to actually get in?
GM: Well, I had to have permission from the bank to join the air force, for the first place, er, once I did that, being in the Air Training Corps, you just filled in a form for application to join the air force. My father was in the area office for the Army in Horsham, and he, ensured that I wasn’t called up for the Army before I was called up for the air force [laughs]
AP: Was erm, can you remember much about the interview or the medical tests that you had to do?
GM: Ah yes, erm, in late January forty-three, I caught the train from Melbourne, er, from Horsham to Melbourne, we over landed at three thirty in the morning, arrived in Melbourne and went straight to er, Preston Motors in Russell Street, I think it was, for my medical and spent all day there, checked medical, colour blindness and everything else like that, spent the day there, and then er, that night we went down to Somers
A: Oh, so this was after you’d enlisted, and you’d been accepted and essentially called up, the first medical that you actually did, was that day that you were called up?
GM: Hmm
AP: Is that right? Very good
GM: Yeh, I say we because I was with a friend of mine who, I went to school with from when we were both the same age, we both came down together
AP: Right, excellent
GM: Erm, years later, a fighter, fight pilot in the Middle East
AP: So, you got to Somers which is the initial training school, what happened then?
GM: Er, had training and er, had trouble with my teeth, because in those days during the depression we had a lot of decay and er, I went to the dentist at Somers, [pause] and he said ‘I’ll have to take all your top teeth out’, yeh, he took four out and he said ‘how are you feeling’, I said ‘alright’, he said, he took another four out, ‘how you feeling’, ‘alright’, he finished up taking all the teeth out in one sitting, that night I was in hospital, bleeding, and he had to come and stitch me up [laughs] [pause] and I had to go back a course, because I was, thirty seven course, to thirty eight course, to finishing course, because I had to have a couple of weeks sick leave because of the problem with my teeth [laughs]
AP: What’s erm, what’s air force dentistry like, what’s air force dentistry like, I don’t?
GM: Not bad, erm, probably the best set of teeth I’ve ever had, with the first set, I smashed them playing football at Ballarat when I was in the air force [laughs]
AP: Alright, what’s, what sort of things did you cover in ITS, what sort of things did you cover in your initial training school?
GM: Oh, er, morse, mathematics, er, aircraft recognition I think, can’t remember what I did down at, it was mainly like, back at school, and when I was interviewed at the end of the course, er, I, give allotment, and he told me I was to be a wireless air gunner, I wasn’t very happy about that, but er, probably my training in morse, that had er, influenced that, I would have been as probably a better, would have been a better navigator ‘cos my maths was pretty good, anyway, that’s how it fell, probably I’m lucky he did make me, because I’m still here [laughs]
AP: So, you finished at Somers, actually, just before we leave Somers, can you tell me something of what Somers, what the actual camp was like, how it was set out and what a normal day sort of entailed?
GM: Er, the camp was good, you did a lot of drilling, erm, [pause] it was just like school I suppose, back at school, you did your lessons and went to bed, unfortunately I, when I arrived there they, gave us a pallet [unclear] to fill up with hay, usually there’s a pallet, but by the time I got down there, all the hay had gone, so I finished the next two months sleeping virtually on an empty bag on the floor, you can imagine what that’s like [laughs]
AP: Yeh, what time of year was it?
GM: Nineteen forty, January, February
AP: Oh, so at least it wasn’t too cold
GM: Or February and March, it wasn’t cold, but your hips, lying on your side, and then, half an hour later you’re on the other side, it was dreadful, that was the only major inconvenience down at Somers, was er, lack of sleep because of the er, virtually sleeping on a wooden floor [laughs]
AP: What er, was it like then, a barracks sort of building?
GM: Yeh, barracks, a tin, tin hut, er, Nissan huts I suppose they were
AP: How many, how many men might have been in there?
GM: Oh, twenty
AP: Twenty, something
GM: Down both sides
AP: Alright, so, you then left Somers, and I think you went to Ballarat next?
GM: Ballarat, yes
AP: What happened at Ballarat?
GM: I was at air gunner school, er, I could do the morse, but I couldn’t cotton on to the theory [pause] er, my other brother had, had, the same trouble, and he, he, they made him an Australian air gunner, so I said oh, that’ll do me, so I told them then that I didn’t want to finish the course of wireless operator and be a straight air gunner, er, that’s it. It was the coldest place we’d ever lived in, Ballarat, the Nissan huts had doors on either end, there was about twenty in each Nissan hut, we used to put on our flying gear to go to bed, it was that cold, the doors were, weren’t flush on the base at either end, and the wind used to come in one end and right out the other end, and it went right through the huts and er, most of us felt cold there, it’s always a cold place Ballarat anyway
AP: It is, I was just there, last weekend and it was only about twelve degrees in the middle of summer, anyway, erm, alright, the first, can you remember something about the first time you went in an aeroplane, what was it and what were you doing?
GM: Erm, I didn’t do any flying at Ballarat, er, I was only there for about four months, and they sent me to Sale, air gunnery school, and there I did my first trip in a Fairey Battle, I was with another gunner, in a practice air to ground gunnery and er, after the other airman had done his, his exercise, I stood up to put the magazine in the gas operated gun, the round magazine, and we, we’d been told that if we lost it, it would cost us five pound, now five pound was a lot of money in those days, for us, a few, couple months pay, and, I was stood up in the Fairey Battle to put my magazine on the gun, it slipped out of my hand, the plane bumped about a bit, slipped out of my hand, was sliding down by the side of the plane and I reached out and caught it sliding down to the ground, sliding down the side of the plane, and, I then realised that I’d taken off my safety [laughs] and I was half way out of the plane, [laughs] anyway they caught the, caught the magazine and [unclear] I finished my exercise
AP: This is your first ever flight?
GM: Yes
AP: Right
[laughter]
GM: [unclear] fumes in the Fairey Battle were dreadful, I couldn’t stand fighting in them too often, just as well I played cricket, a lot of cricket, because otherwise I would have lost that magazine
AP: Indeed, erm, did you encounter any accidents or anything, did you see any accidents or hear about anything during training?
GM: No, not down at Sale I didn’t hear of any, or see any
AP: Perhaps, later?
GM: [pause] No, I saw a plane shot down
GM: Not so much accidents, but we’ll get on to that shortly, I’m sort of more looking at training at this point. Alright, so, you’ve finished at er, at Sale, you are now a qualified air gunner
GM: Yeh
AP: Then you get shipped overseas
GM: Come out of Sale, then we went to Ascot Vale, showground embarkation depot, we were only there for a couple of weeks and they moved the embarkation depot to Melbourne [unclear] er, there for about a fortnight, sleeping in the old southern stand, underneath the old southern stand, we called it pneumonia alley, and on the seventeenth of November we were, headed off to er, [pause] Port Melbourne to sail to America, on the [unclear] line, we left Melbourne and went down south, New Zealand and up to San Francisco, we were there at Angel Island which was just near Alcatraz, we were at Angel Island for three or four days and then we went across America by train, there was about two hundred and fifty of us, mainly air gunners. [pause]
Arrived New York at two thirty in the morning, calm morning and had to march about a month to Fort Slocum, [pause] walked about a mile, [unclear] to Fort Slocum where we were billeted for the next fortnight, we had a great time in New York, it was Christmas time, Anzac House looked after us, every day, we had somewhere to go, on the weekend we would go to a family, Christmas Day we went to a family, I can’t say enough for Anzac House in New York, the way they looked after us, went to all the major buildings, the Empire State building, the radio station, went for a weekend down in [pause] where was it? A suburb of New York, New Rochelle was it, not sure, I can’t remember now, we had, three of us had a very nice time down there for the weekend, [pause] we left New York on New Year’s Eve, on the er, er, what’s the name of the ship? [pause] some’ at, Samaria, it’s about twenty thousand tonner which used to run on the Odessa line, and, twenty thousand ton ship with fourteen thousand troops on board, American, mostly American, a lot of erm, negroes, and the first night out was very rough and, a lot of the Americans hadn’t been to sea before, and the next morning it was terrible, sewage was all overflowing and it was floating down the gangways, [laughs] you know. We got up to see if we were in a convoy, two of us, a friend of mine, and er, it took us about two hours to get up to the promenade deck, we were down on eighth deck, two hundred and fifty Australians in one room, with one door each, so you can imagine what happened, we were below water line, if it was torpedoed, and the kitchen was in the same area, and there was, three tier bunks, all around this area, counting the two hundred and fifty Australians, and I was just near the exit door.
When we got up to the promenade deck we saw ships everywhere. We were in a convoy of about one hundred and twenty ships I think it was, the oldest battle ship Texas, was right next to us, which was a bit, a bit thankful for that. [pause] Unfortunately, we only had two meals a day and we missed breakfast because it took us another hour to get downstairs, and our meal time was over, so we had to buy some chocolate in the canteen for breakfast. [laughs] [pause] Seven days later we arrived in Liverpool, luckily, we avoided any submarines, although at one stage, the smoke was coming from our funnels and the Texas signalled us, I read this on morse, ‘if you don’t stop the smoke you will have to drop out of the convoy’, that worried us a bit, [laughs] luckily, they stopped the smoke and we were able to stay in the convoy. We arrived in Liverpool on the seventh of January, I think it was, forty-four, and er, caught a train down to Brighton, and er, [pause] we were billeted in the, in the Grand Hotel in Brighton, [pause] we were offered er, leave, at, people’s homes, in, in England, and I, accepted that offer in one case, and went to High Wycombe where I was in a town for a week by a family by the name of Cook, the husband was a, headmaster of a, college in High Wycombe, and they were very nice, treated me very well, there was only four hundred, their house was only four hundred yards from Bomber Command headquarters along the road. [laughs]
After that, we were posted to, in February forty-four, late February forty-four, we were posted to Silverstone, which is now the, the er, you know erm, the car racing, where they had Wellingtons, after a couple of weeks there we were formed into crews, all the, all the airman were assembled in a hangar, and said, right oh, sort yourselves out into queues, crews, well, I’d been a friend of another gunner since we’d arrived and the Melbourne cricket ground he, he, came from Griffiths, in New South Wales, and we decided we were both at Silverstone, we decided that, he’d be a mid-upper gunner and I’d be a rear gunner and try and get in the same crew, and a New Zealand pilot came around and said ‘have you got crew yet,’ ‘no, no’, so we told him we’d be prepared to fly with him as mid upper and rear gunner, he also got an Australian navigator, an English wireless operator and an English bomb aimer, that completed the crew of six at that stage. We then went to Turweston, satellite aerodrome of Silverstone, to do flying after we’d been doing lectures on aircraft recognition, gunnery and guns, etc, etc, and we’d only been there a couple of days and, our wireless operator was asked to fly with another crew on a gunnery exercise near the North Sea, and er, the wireless operator, he came to me and said ‘Gerald’ he said ‘I’ve got to fly with another crew and I haven’t got a watch. and I’ve got to send messages back at certain times, will you lend me a watch?’, and I said ‘yes’, the family had given me a watch as a send-off present a couple of months earlier, that afternoon I heard that the plane had ditched in the North Sea, lost an engine, and er, [pause] the only one that didn’t get out the plane, ‘cos there were about nine on the plane, was the, our wireless operator, he was killed. I asked one of the Australian gunners what happened and he said well he was sitting in my ditching position next to me, and all of a sudden he got up and raced back to his set and he, he must have been knocked out, because he didn’t get back, and I said he went back to pick up my watch, that’s the only reason he’d have gone back, they put them on the desk, the wireless operator, so they could see the, that’s been on my mind ever since. [pause] That night, seven, six people from the same hut as us, there was about three crews in the hut, were all killed in the aircraft accident, they were doing circuits and bumps, and er, obviously something wrong, went wrong, and they crashed near the aerodrome. There were seven killed in our hut, out of about twenty in one day, [unclear] this other crew and Australian pilot, er, [pause]
They finished our training at Turweston, without any further problems, and returned to Silverstone to do er, [pause] er, what do they call them? They used to fly around England, and training?
AP: Navigation flying
GM: Navigation flying
AP: A cross country thing
GM: Cross country, yeh, flights, [pause] one night we were, we’d just taken off towards dark, on a cross country up to Scotland, and back to Wales and then back to base, and er, ran, ran into the edge of an anvil cloud, and er, it ruined all of the electrical circuits in the plane, [pause] er, the navigator had to do all his navigating on his own, wireless operator couldn’t help him, and when we were due back to base, we didn’t know where we were, because there was a lot of fog about, we weren’t sure where we were, and er, I spotted a lantern flashing two letters, and I told the pilot and he said what were the letters and I said, I told him what they were and the navigator, thanks very much, we know where we are now, we were only a few miles from home, [laughs] we arrived home safely, and that was about the only incident, worth noting I think [pause] [unclear] not sure, yeh, that’s right
After finishing at Silverstone, went to [pause] Methwold, were we did some, didn’t do any flying, we just did some er, PT, physical training and getting fit for conversion unit at Shepherds Grove, we were only at Methwold for about a week, left the Shepherds Grove, er, conversion unit [pause] and er, [pause] had a scotch engineer when we arrived there, he, he was brilliant, he was an engineer, although he was only twenty two, he was an engineer in the civil air force before he joined the air force, finished up with a DFM, had er, on one occasion at Shepherds Grove, we were going on a cross country and he went out to inspect the plane we were to fly in, with a small torch, you know, like a pencil like torch, the size of a pencil, inspect seven planes with this pencil before he’d get in one to fly, I said ‘this’ll do me’ [laughs] he’d point out the discrepancies on the plane, to the ground staff and said, ‘I’m not flying in that one’, eventually got one that we flew in and managed to get back. While we were at Shepherds Grove, one night were [pause] there was a Nazi, er, a German fighter came in and shot one of the Sterlings down at the base and crashed into the hangar and cleaned out two more Sterlings, three Sterlings, plus the one night, we didn’t know anything about it until we went down to the flights the next day, and saw the wreckage, it just missed the conning tower, the er, control tower, [pause] Shepherds Grove, we did some cross country, [pause] [background noise] and then we went to [unclear] Con unit, er, LFS, Lanc finishing school at the [unclear] and er, the first time I’d been in a Lancaster, I, was sitting in the rear turret and all of a sudden, the pilot sent the engineer full power, [emphasis] and I just went back [emphasis] and I thought, this’ll do me, I said [unclear] flying and taking off in Wellingtons and, and er, Sterlings before that, I used to say a prayer they’d get up off the ground, but I knew the Lancaster would because you could feel the power. We were only there for about, a week, and then we went to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall, on the twenty-third of July, we went on a loaded climb, er, three hour flight with bombs on board, to give the pilot practice taking off, with bombs in bomb bay, then we returned to base at Mildenhall, we, unfortunately, the skipper forgot he had a heavy load on, tapped the engine before we reached the runway, it landed on the road and bounced over the fence and onto the runway, [laughs] luckily there were no cars on the road [laughs] That was the only problem we had at Mildenhall, until a few days later our pilot was selected to go out with another crew on their last trip, as a second pilot, going to experience before he took his own crew on ops, on the first night, they returned early because the rear gunner got convulsions on over the target, and er, the crew returned to Mildenhall without carrying out their exercise, bombing raid. The next night, they were sent off again on a raid on Stuttgart, towards the end of July, [pause] about two hours before they took off, I could see the pilot was distressed, he really couldn’t find his lucky charm, a little tiki, and I spent an hour going through all his, with him, going through all the gear and everything for his tiki, we never found it, yes a [unclear] and when he left me, I think he had a premonition, because the crew never returned that night, they were shot down over France on the way home, all they were killed. The next day the Wing Commander, asked us if we’d consider being spares, stay at Mildenhall and be spares for other crews, with different er, people unavailable from illness or replacements, we said no, we were a crew, all we needed was another pilot, and he accepted that, after a lot of discussion, and then we then went back to Wratting Common conversion unit to find another pilot. [pause] [background noise] There, we picked up an Australian pilot, [unclear] class and completed a conversion unit course with him, we then returned to Feltwell to do, for a week or so, to do a course on Lancasters, and then we’re posted on 186 Squadron in Tuddenham in Suffolk, on the twenty-sixth of October nineteen forty four, twenty eighth of October forty four, we did our first op, and the Wing Commander took us on our first op, he had a habit of doing that with new crews rather than sending a [unclear] other crews. [pause] Our first target was Flushing, Scheldt estuary, and bombing at eight thousand feet, when we arrived out at the plane to take off, I got into the rear turret and found out there were no guns in the rear turret, so I called up on the intercom to the Wing Commander, to tell him there were no guns in the rear turret, and he said ‘oh well it’s too late, to change planes, we’ll have to go without them’, he said, ‘oh well, keep your eyes open and tell me what you can see’, so I’m probably the only rear gunner that’s ever flew on an operation without any guns in the rear turret, thankfully we were not attacked by any fighters or anything, but I did notice a lot of flak. [pause] The following day we went on another daylight operation to Westkapelle on Walcheren Island, going bombing at eight thousand feet, on er, gun, gun placements I think it was, the target, [pause] a few weeks before that, a couple of friends of ours, was shot down over Westkapelle and were taken prisoners of war, two gunners that I’d met at Melbourne cricket ground when I was, and we became firm, pretty good friends, they were in a different squadron, in 5, er, 5 Group, er, now, and our first night trip was our third trip to Koblenz on the sixth of November, forty four, and on the way home over France, I saw a light miles behind us, and it was following us, I didn’t report it because it was well away from us, couldn’t work out what it was though, then all of a sudden it went straight up in the air, [emphasis] I said, talked about a sight, I didn’t know what it was but I think later on, I think I realised it must have been a, a, er, jet, they called, what’s the name, ME, Messerschmitt 262 was it?
AP: Yep, 262 was a jet, yep
GM: Whether it was or not, I don’t know, but I wasn’t going to mention it in debriefing when we arrived home because they might have thought I was going mad, [laughs] and take me off ops, that wouldn’t have been fair to the crew, so, I said nothing. And then, erm, we, the next er, [background noise] the next date, nine, ten, ten operations were in daylight, mainly to the Ruhr, on er, tagging er, [pause] oil refineries and er, communications, [pause] [background noise] on one of those raids on Gelsenkirchen, I, I saw a crew that slept in the same billet as me, shot down, [pause] er, they were hit on, and they were only about a hundred yards to our port and er, they were hit by flak, caught fire, and I saw three or four of the crew bale out, when the pilot, he must have been very brave because his whole cabin was on fire and he kept it steady for some twenty odd seconds, half a minute or so, and I saw three of the crew bale out, and then all of a sudden the plane went into a steep dive and crashed, a dreadful sight. [pause]
What else can I tell you? [pause] [background noise] Yes, thirteenth of April, there was a night raid on Wurzburg, near Leipzig [inaudible] to tell, there were seven hundred and fifty anti-aircraft guns guarding this, this place, like fireworks that night, looked like them [laughs] I believe them, [laughs] I er, we were hit, on this raid, by flak, and er, lost our air speed indicator and the pilot decided to land at the emergency aerodrome at Woodbridge, which had a very long and wide runway, they got down, did repair and got permission to land, cranes and everything on the side of the runway just in case you crashed, [unclear] for the next plane coming in, they put us up for the night, the next morning I saw all the great area of smashed planes [laughs] fighters, bombers, [laughs] everything, they were parked in an area safe to the aerodrome, er, [pause] at the end of December, forty-four, our squadron was transferred to Stradishall from Tuddenham, er, early in January, our wireless operator was late back from leave, and missed an operation that we, we were put on, so the Wing Commander told him that if there was ever a shortage of a wireless operator through illness or late back from leave, he’d have to replace him, and this happened, a couple of weeks later, the wireless operator, another wireless operator back late from leave, and er, our wireless operator was called up to replace him, he went to briefing, was out in the plane, a night operation it was, and er, he was sitting in a plane waiting to taxi out, when all of a sudden he got a tap on the shoulder, ‘this is my crew you can nick off’, in other words, so he, I, he packed up and went back to bed, [emphasis] meanwhile, we were in the mess area drinking as all the planes were taking off, and all of a sudden, a terrific explosion at the end of the runway, one of the planes had crashed and exploded, enquired what plane it was, it was the plane that our wireless operator was briefed to fly on, so we went back to the bar and had a couple of drinks on him, then went to bed, and now, the rest of the, the pilot he wasn’t with us but er, the rest of the crew were NCO’s at that stage, we all went back to our barracks and went to bed, the wireless operator didn’t sleep in the same barracks as us, as he had a room at the inn, where we used to keep all our parcels from Australia and had a primus stove, and used to cook our meals, and had a good meal now and again because you didn’t get a very good meal in the sergeants mess, and er, next morning, we didn’t know he’d gone to bed, and the next morning he appears at the door of our barracks, ‘where have you been?’, ‘why?’, I said, ‘you were on that plane that crashed and exploded last night’, and he said, ‘oh no’, he said, ‘the other wireless operator turned up and kicked me off the plane’, he went white, later that day, three other Australians in the crew got notices that they got parcels at the post office to be collected, the base post office, and there was nothing for him, our wireless operator, and he usually got as many parcels as anyone, so when I went down to pick my parcels up, he came with me, and he casually said at the WAAF behind the counter, ‘any parcels for Warrant Officer Perry?’, ‘oh yes, we are sending them back to London because he was killed last night’, we then realised that no one else knew that the other wireless operator had turned up, so we raced down to the adjutant, and told him, [laughs] and he was about to send off the telegram [unclear] for our wireless operator [laughs]
Er, what else can I tell you? [pause] Oh, one of our daylight raids, we were badly, hit by anti-aircraft fire, and er, when we were hit, we started to go down, and I called up on the intercom and no one answered me, so I prepared to get me shirt and bale out, and all before, I took me helmet off, hold on we are out of control, what had happened was, as we were hit by anti-aircraft fire, at the same time we ran into the slip stream of another Lanc, and then went into a dive, and the pilot said, had been too busy getting control of the plane to answer me, so, luckily I didn’t bale, hadn’t bailed out by then, we arrived home, found out that [unclear] the aircraft incendiaries shell had burnt itself out in the spars between the petrol tanks
AP: Ooh
GM: I understand it was sent to, to Air Ministry and they didn’t know that the Germans had these, the anti-aircraft shells in the, in the shells that they were firing, we thought we were a bit lucky there. [pause] Erm, thirteenth of February, we went to Dresden, night operation, and we were told that the Russians had asked us to bomb it, said he, and that er, Dresden did produce precision implements for the German forces, like binoculars for the tanks, bomb sights and er, periscopes, so we had no hesitation, in, we believe we had no hesitation in going on that raid, although I have said some [pause] people have had misgivings since then, but [pause] it certainly was a, heavy raid and er, caused a lot of damage, we were told that the Russians, which were about thirty or forty miles away from Dresden, where they were being held up by troops coming through Dresden and that was the reason why they asked us to bomb it. [pause] What else can I tell you?
AP: I’m just letting you go at this point, [laughs] I will have some more questions for you later but I’m seeing if you answer them as you go, so
GM: Ah yes, on the ninth of March forty-five, we were [unclear] on a daylight raid to [unclear] which is a coking plant, daylight raid, and er, after we’d taken off we lost an engine, about ten thousand feet, fly around England and the pilot and the engineer discussed whether we could still complete the raid, on three engines, climbed to twenty thousand feet, and they agreed that they could, provided they cut corners on each dog lick, well, when we arrived over the target, we were about the twelfth plane to bomb, arrived back safely, the er. [pause]
On the raids, daylight raids on Gelsenkirchen on the fourth of march forty-five, we were severely damaged by flak, and er, on the way back the mid upper gunner told me to turn my turret to starboard and had a look at the, er the, power plant, and, which I did, I saw there was a hole about six inches by twelve inches in the elevator, only a couple of yards from where I was sitting, I think the shell must have gone clean through the elevator and exploded above us, all tanks were holed except one on that same trip, [unclear] ever, hit twice, and a big hole near elevator, forty holes in the aircraft, and when we arrived back it was sent to the scrap heap, as far as I know [pause]
Er, one of the other daylight raids, we were [unclear] Munster railway marshalling yards and we were the leading aircraft, in the whole of the hundred and eighty-four planes, hundred and eighty odd planes in the raid, we were leading the raid we were about to bomb, when I saw another squadron directly above us open their bomb doors, so I reported to the skipper, he had er, they opened their bomb doors and started dropping bombs, [laughs] so we had to direct the pilot to dodge the bombs coming down, [laughter] wasn’t very nice. We were on time and I think the planes there, the squadron there was ahead of time [pause] What else can I tell you? Oh, our last raid was on, last operation was my thirty seventh, we went to Kiel on the ninth of April, [unclear] she was, after dropping our bombs we were covered in searchlights, and the, pilot threw the plane around like a fighter, the engineer assured me that at one stage we were upside down, on a ninety degrees bank, and the pilot got us out of that and eventually, we, after about ten minutes, we escaped the searchlights and headed back home. We were briefed, that once we crossed the Danish coast and North Sea, we were to descend to four, seven thousand feet, well we’d lost a lot of height whilst over the target. The pilot was tired and he said, I’m going to put the nose down and go like a bat out of hell to get down to seven thousand feet, well, all of a sudden, I sitting in the rear turret, I felt the tails skin and I instinctively looked over the side, and there were two gunners, the rear gunner and the mid upper gunner looking at me from another Lancaster, well that was about two o’clock in the morning, you get a lot of light, in the northern Europe, I still don’t know how our tails didn’t hit each other and the fins on the, I reckon we couldn’t have missed them by more than a feet, a few feet, the other [unclear] the other plane. After we’d returned from that raid, we were told that we’d finished our tour and we’d already finished it before we went on the raid, because a signal came through from the Air Ministry reducing the tour from forty to thirty-five, and our crew had already done more than thirty-five. They bought the notice of the new Wing Commander who was an Englishman, and he said, ‘oh they are on the battle order now it’s too late to change and let them go’. Nice, virtually could have been our last trip for our crew and another crew if we had hit each other over the North Sea. Anything else?
AP: Always more, erm, always more, right so, you have given me a pretty solid erm, one of my questions was do any of your operations stand out in your memory, and I think you’ve answered that one, [laughs] but erm, some more general questions if you don’t mind, erm, your life on the squadron, can you describe the sergeants mess and the sort of things that happened there?
GM: [laughs] Ah, the sergeants mess, well we were all officers in by January
AP: Ok, well the officers mess, the mess, describe the mess
GM: It was great the officers mess, sergeants mess wasn’t too bad, we used to enjoy a drink together, we were like a family, er, there wasn’t much variety in the food, but we were well looked after by our own parcels we received from Australia, we had a little stove which we used to cook things on, if we felt like a good feed we had one, had plenty of tinned sausages and fruit cake, tinned fruit, soups, we had er, we looked after ourselves if we had to. That was when we were in the sergeant’s mess, in the officer’s mess we didn’t have to, that’s because we were well looked after there
AP: What did it look like, the officers mess, how was it arranged and?
GM: Well it was a, Stradishall was a peace time station and all buildings were brick, [unclear] and brick, yeh, just like a reasonable life
AP: Did er, how did you cope with the stress of flying, you did thirty-seven trips, so presumably you got pretty good at them, but what did you do in your downtime and how did you sort of wind down?
GM: You got leave every six weeks, two of them on the squadron, I used to go to, stay with friends of a brothers, she was, she looked after three hotels for her father, one was in Louth, in Kings Head in Louth, another in Leicester, another in Lincoln, and I was invited down there anytime I was on leave, to any of those places, she was managing the place. I went to the three of them
AP: Did er, did you actually catch up with your brother much at all, in England?
GM: Ah yes, I, after I finished at Silverstone before I went to Methwold, I had seven days leave and I er, he was up at Kinloss, north of Scotland, not far from Inverness, and I went up there by train and I didn’t tell him I was coming, and I reported to the guard house and they tannoyed for him, and he didn’t appear, so they said he must be in town, so I sat in the guard house for a couple of hours, and all of a sudden a bus comes in from town and out staggers my brother. ‘What are you doing here?’ [emphasis] I said, ‘I have come up to see you’, he said ‘you didn’t let me know’, I said, ‘no I didn’t, took me this long to find out where you are, a couple of months.’ Anyway, he organised a bed for me and we had a couple of days together before I went back to base. He completed the tour, he er, his crew had a mid-air collision near Rockford, while they were in training, the crew of the other Wellington were all killed including one of his best mates and his plane was, had a supervising pilot, he bought the plane back down in the paddock, at night, the plane was on fire and my brother couldn’t get out of the rear turret and they chopped him out with an axe. I understand that the pilot got the George Cross for that incident. [pause] He completed, he only did a tour of twenty and his crew had taken off ops to go down to Boscombe Downs to test flight the Avro three, er the Halifax 111, and he was down there several months doing that. Then he was sent up to Kinloss
AP: Were there any superstitions or hoodoos within your squadron or your crew, you told me about the tiki thing, were there any other sort of, lucky charms or [inaudible]
GM: Oh, I had a kangaroo around my neck, a little kangaroo that was given to me, round my neck, I didn’t think it was a lucky charm, I just thought it was something that had been given to me
AP: Fair enough
GM: I used to say a prayer every time we took off, going up, sitting in the rear turret, [laughs] I’m not as religious now as I used to be [laughs]
AP: I guess that it concentrates the mind some what?
GM: Yeh
AP: It would, that’s an interesting question in its self I suppose, was there much in the way of religion or spiritual guidance or support or something during your tour?
GM: No, I didn’t notice any
AP: Nothing in particular?
GM: No, nothing in particular, there
AP: Erm, all right, so er, a general operational question I guess, you as a gunner, you are sitting there in the aeroplane and you see a fighter and you say, ‘corkscrew, port, go’, what happens next?
GM: Oh, I didn’t have to fire me gun
AP: Well, that was lucky because you did one trip without them
GM: No
[laughter]
AP: Ok, theoretically, what happens next, I suppose you would have done fighter affiliation and that sort of thing?
GM: Well, yeh, you try and focus on the plane, you can’t fire until he gets closer to you, he’s probably firing at you because he’s got cannons, you’ve only got 303 machine guns, and you can’t fire at him when he’s miles away, but er, when he got within four hundred yards, you were entitled to have a shot at him, and, you had to arrange a deflection, and planes, your own plane is going down in a corkscrew and he’s coming across, they got fired at, and you have to allow deflection, and try and hit him, [laughs] but I didn’t have to. We were told that er, if you saw, at night time, you saw a plane, a German fighter, try and avoid them, we did see one coming back from Koblenz on our first trip, he was an 88, a Junkers 88 and he hadn’t seen us, well we didn’t think he had, we told the pilot and the pilot said, ‘well I’ll just change course and see if he follows us’, which he did, and he didn’t follow us, so we, we just kept away from him, and that was our instructions, we weren’t there to fight them, because we were there to bomb and carry out the operation and do our bombing, if we keep away from the fighter was the best thing to do, was to try and avoid them
AP: Can you describe, you’re sitting in your rear turret in a Lancaster, what’s around you, what does it look like, what does it feel like?
GM: Well, in daylight you saw a lot, see the, as you’re leaving the target it would be the bomb going off and you know the
AP: Shockwaves
GM: Shockwaves going out with the four thousand pounders going off, and er, at night time it was just dark, [emphasis] [laughs] below me looking over in the dark, trying to see anything, and er, probably the biggest problem was your own planes, collisions, there were a lot of collisions during the war over Germany
AP: Probably more than we think as well, two aeroplanes just sort of going missing, yeh indeed. Erm, I might back track a little bit, let’s have a look what else. Your, when you first got to England, what did you think of wartime England as an Australian just arriving in war time England, what was your first impressions?
GM: [laughs] Well, I can’t say that any impressions were, I was surprised that the [pause] well there wasn’t that much to worry about in those, forty, early forty-four, some fighters used to come and fly over Brighton and fly over but never caused any trouble while we there
AP: What did you think about the English civilians?
GM: They were brave, they must have had to put up with a lot more, I know that, the big cities. I wouldn’t want to be seeing what I saw in daylight over Germany, I wouldn’t want to be down on the ground there, it would be the same for the English people
AP: Indeed, right we will go back to the very beginning, erm, where were you when you heard the war was declared, and what did you think at the time? You would have been relatively young I imagine?
GM: Yes, I was er, fourteen, fifteen. I came to church and I came out on Sunday night and I heard Mr Menzies [unclear] England’s at war and Australia was there for them
AP: What did that make you think?
GM: It didn’t mean much to me at the time because I thought it would be over by the time I had to go there, be done with it [laughs]
AP: Were you in the Air Training Corps at this point or did that come later?
GM: No, no, oh that didn’t start until, oh a year or two, and after that they started the employee training scheme, they produced that at me
AP: So, alright, and now we’ll jump to the end, you’ve told me how your tour ended, erm, how did you find readjusting to civilian life?
GM: Very difficult, I was drinking too much, smoking too much and luckily, I played cricket, and I think that was what got me through er. [pause] I had work and er, and cricket probably, and then football, I played cricket and football, all the year round so it kept me reasonably fit
AP: Was that amongst servicemen or was that just in a general team?
GM: Err
AP: Were there other servicemen involved in those clubs, or was it?
GM: Ah, just a few, yes, yes, there were a few, a navy man, a navy man in my team, [unclear] first eleven [pause] My brother had a worse, I think he was a bit worse than I was, he became an alcoholic, really, he had a heart attack and died when he was about fifty-six
AP: This was your, the one that was in the air force?
GM: Yeh, the one that had the mid-air collision [pause] My father was, where was he? Oh, at church at Horsham, and superintendent of the Sunday school and he was a bit disgusted in Harry, my brother came home from England, because he was rolling home drunk every night, but er, my oldest brother he was er, a dive bomber pilot, and the same like me and told my father to forget about it because of what we’d been through [cries] [pause] That was pretty difficult as a family [pause] I don’t know that they had er, what they have now the stress problem, they probably did, but they didn’t know anything about it in those days, we didn’t get any counselling when we got home [pause]
AP: So, it took you a number of years to get back to normal, so to speak, you think?
GM: Yeh, I think so, I was a pretty heavy drinker for a long time, which didn’t help when you are working in a bank. I think they understood, I hope it
AP: So, I guess that my, my final question, perhaps the most important one, what do you think is the legacy of Bomber Command, and how do you want to see it remembered?
GM: Well, I think they helped win the war but no, they helped out, the damage they must have caused to the communications and synthetic oil plants and oil plants, and we were on mostly daylight targets, we had GEE-H which was supposed to be more accurate than visual bombing, er we were specifically targeting not, area bombing, we were targeting, targets like marshalling yards, went to Cologne four times, and we bombed the marshalling yards four times in daylight, went over, turned out years later the Cologne Cathedral just needed a, the yards were still there [laughs]
AP: Certainly is
GM: I remember one raid on Cologne, there was so much flak, it was a clear day, by the time we left the target there was a cloud over the, over the city, it was just flak, flak
AP: How do you think Bomber Command is remembered today, how do you think Bomber Command is remembered today?
GM: Well, I think it’s remembered more than it was, than just after the war, I think people have got to realise that they did do something other than bomb Dresden [pause] I’m not one for thinking things like all that, I’m one that remembers things, [laughs] what happened
AP: Fair enough, that works. So, any final thoughts?
GM: No, just glad that I’m home [laughs] still going, [laughs] don’t know whether it will increase my life or not, but I’m ninety-one now, and I still remember all these things
AP: Very good, well, on that note, thank you very much Gerald
GM: It’s been a pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AMcPhersonGM160221
Title
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Interview with Gerald McPherson
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:25:29 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-02-21
Description
An account of the resource
Gerald McPherson grew up in Australia and was working in banking before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 186 Squadron.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
United States
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
15 Squadron
186 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Battle
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
faith
Gee
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Shepherds Grove
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Turweston
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/191/3591/LOHaraHF655736v1.1.pdf
557abec419df40658803dece8c9dfd75
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
O'Hara, Herbert
Paddy O'Hara
H F O'Hara
Description
An account of the resource
59 items. The collection concerns the wartime career of Flight Sergeant Herbert Frederick O'Hara (1917 – 1968, 655736, 195482 Royal Air Force). Herbert O'Hara served on 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby between February and May 1944. His aircraft was shot down over France in May 1944 and he evaded until he was liberated in September 1944. He was then commissioned. The collection contains service records and two logbooks, notification of him missing as well as correspondence from and photographs of French people who helped him evade. In addition there is an account of travelling across the Atlantic for flying training in Florida as well as notes from his aircrew officers course at RAF Credenhill. Finally there are a number of target and reconnaissance photographs and six paintings.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Brian O'Hara and catalogued by Nigel Huckins and IBCC staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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O'Hara, HF
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
France
Germany
Poland
Wales
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Suffolk
France--Nord-Pas-de-Calais
France--Lyon
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Stuttgart
Poland--Gdynia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Title
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Herbert O'Hara's South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book
Format
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One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LOHaraHF655736v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
South African Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Log book for Sergeant Herbert O'Hara from 7 November 1942 to 9 September 1962. He was stationed with 12 Squadron at RAF Wickenby, where he flew Lancasters as navigator. The log book shows 14 night operations over France and Germany, with one to Poland. Targets were: Augsburg, Aulnoye, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Friedrichshafen, Gdynia, Karlsruhe, Lyon, Mailly-le-Camp, Mantenon, Stuttgart. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Maxwell. The log book is noted DID NOT RETURN beside the last operational flight. It is subsequently noted in Sgt O'Hara's hand that his aircraft was shot down leaving the vicinity of Mailley-le-Camp on 3 May 1944, abandoned by the crew, and that he was in France for 4 months before being liberated and flown home by the Air Transport Auxillary on 3 September 1944. He was subsequently posted to Advanced Flying Units and Flying Schools until finishing in 1962.
12 Squadron
1657 HCU
26 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
C-47
Dominie
evading
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
missing in action
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Feltwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Penrhos
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Wickenby
RAF Wing
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3609/BWallerTWallerTv1.1.pdf
cd2cdd3683f81e91523da9c0cbc4fe91
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Waller, T
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
THE WAR MEMOIRS OF 1096366 Cpl. T. WALLER MID
[black and white photo of a young man in uniform]
15-5-1941 to 15-6-1946
[page break]
In March 1936, my family moved from Hull to West Leyes Road in Swanland where we lived at West Lodge which had formed part of Reckit's [sic] walled kitchen garden before the demolition of the manor in 1935, but unfortunately the garden was sold in 1944, so in March of that year we moved to Cottingham.
I worked for J Waites and Son at their grocer's shop in Main Street Swanland, which today has been modernised and converted into a mini-market and on Wednesdays I had a half day off.
When in Hull in April 1940, at the age of 18, I had the impulse to go to the recruiting office and volunteer for the Royal Air Force, hoping for training as a transport driver. I duly signed on the dotted line and then returned home and explained to my mother what I had done, to which she responded "What did you do that for, you'll never pass the medical".
In due course a letter arrived informing me that I had to attend the medical examination, which I did and passed as A1 (fit for active service). When I arrived home I told my mother what had transpired, to which she replied "But you can't have!" so I responded saying "Well I have" but to this day I never found out the reasons behind her remark.
Not long after, I received the papers telling me that I had been accepted for service in the RAF and to report to the assessment centre at Cardington [sic], which I did, only to be told that I would be trained as an armourer and not a driver as I'd hoped.
It was disappointing, however I returned home as I had been given a week to sort things prior to starting my enlistment. when I arrived home my eldest brother was there on leave, he was already a mechanic in the RAF, and I told him that I was soon to begin training as an armourer. He told me that this would involve bombing-up and servicing aircraft guns, but he also went on to say that many experienced armourers had been re-assigned to act as air-gunners, in Fairy Battle aircraft, during the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk. Unfortunately many of them were killed in action, creating a shortage of skilled armourers, and that is why I had been assigned for this training.
I said my goodbyes and left the following week as I had to report to Blackpool for kitting-out with uniforms, cutlery, etc and I also had a vaccination and inoculations before starting basic training. This was followed by a day trip to the Derby Road baths and then a week of various lectures before being sent to Morcombe [sic]. It was there that the military training (including square bashing) commenced, this being carried out on the seafront promenade and down the side streets which provided a great spectacle for the local residents and tourists alike.
Next it was out into the fields to practice bayonet drill which involved attacking straw filled sacks suspended between wooden frames. Following the command to fix bayonet the drill went something like this, 'on guard - rifled poised' 'thrust - stick the bayonet into the sack', twist bayonet and 'pull it out' and so it went on.
I and some of my fellow trainees were billeted in a large house with two attic rooms which were used by the owner's sons when on leave from the Royal Navy. The owner and his family were the kindest people you could wish to meet, providing us with good food, comfortable accommodation and they also allowed the married men to have their wives stay over for weekends, this made it a home-from-home for us all.
-1-
[page break]
If any of us were feeling off-colour we would be pampered and well looked after, as one of the daughters was a nurse at the local hospital, and if you happened to mention that you had heard the latest record they would have it within a few days, for you to play on the radiogram.
After the war my sister, brother, his fiancée and I had a lovely holiday with the family as they had re-opened as a guest house again.
After Morcombe it was posting to Kirkham in Lancashire and this was where the work really started with the commencement of the armourer's course. It was found to be nose to the grindstone however I and many of the other trainees didn't really want to be there, for various personal reasons, therefore when it came to filing-down metal for gun parts we would file the metal in the wrong way. When the instructor came round and saw what we were doing he retorted "You can stop that lark! None of you are getting off this course but if you put your backs into it you can do it". After that we had no choice but to knuckle down and get stuck in, which we did and eventually we found that we were beginning to enjoy it, that coupled with the fact that it was quite easy to get to Blackpool, this made life better.
We managed to venture into Blackpool on several occasions and enjoyed some of the various shows at the Opera House, we also found a nice pie shop near the bus station and on the bus journey back to camp it would be a raucous sing-song, what a life!
Once the course was completed we all had to line-up outside the armoury, an officer then came along and said "When your name is called, step forward", my name was eventually called and I duly stepped forward. As selected minions the chosen few, we were informed that we had been posted to Credonhill in Herefordshire, for further training as fitter-armourers we had to go there was no choice.
Down to Credonhill we went and began the new course, which again was nose to the grindstone, however after getting stuck-in the work became enjoyable and the effort paid off as we passed with flying colours. It was there in the September of 1942 that I celebrated my 21st birthday although I was all alone in the billet listening to classical music and from that time on I became hooked on that type of music.
Whilst there we were fortunate in that we could visit Hereford at the weekends, with its fine cathedral, canteen and the river Ouse which gave us a chance to relax and go boating, so I would say that on the whole our stay there was not too bad.
Seven day leave followed which meant a taste of civilian life again and a semblance of normality, that is to say no sergeant bawling at you to come at the double, your own bed to sleep in and a private bathroom with no one making rude comments about your appendage, but alas it was over all too soon.
My first operational deployment came in late 1941 with a posting to Stradishall, (now High Point prison), to 138 Squadron, which was part of the SOE (Special Operations Executive), and I remained there until March 1942 at which time I should have been transferred to Wyton.
At this point it is worth noting a few details about 138 Squadron and its work as it operated for three and a half years, ranging over Europe from Norway it [sic] the north, at times deep into Poland and to Yugoslavia in the south, transporting agents and dropping supplies to the various resistance movement [sic] throughout these countries.
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Operation aircraft included the venerable Lysander, affectionately known as the Lizzie, and the Whitley bomber, both of which were originally based at Stradishall before being transferred to Tampsford in March 1942.
Our job was to pack cylindrical supply canisters with whatever was needed, such as arms, ammunition, explosives, radio sets and other vital equipment and supplies, and then load them into the Whitley bomber's bomb bay. The bomber then delivered the canisters to saboteurs and resistance movements in the various countries, dropping them by parachute into rendezvous points where a reception committee of local underground members would be waiting to receive them.
The agents were usually flown to and from their destinations by the squadron's Lysanders, which were quiet aircraft capable of landing and taking off from rough short unprepared airstrips, only staying on the ground for very short periods. You never knew the agent's identity, due to the secret nature of operations, and to preserve their anonymity a telescopic cover was used, extending from the rear of the transport vehicle to the aircraft. Very few people knew in advance of these flights so in winter it was not unusual to be called out in the middle of the night to clear snow from the runway to enable aircraft to take off or land.
My first leave from Stradishall was quite an experience as the train station at Haverhill was well over a mile from the camp and I arrived there just as the train was about to depart, this was when it all started. The station porter asked 'Do you want this train?' so I said 'Yes', but as there was little time he suggested that I obtain my ticket at the other end and virtually pushed me into a carriage. As we approached Hull the ticket collector came round, I had my railway warrant but no valid ticket therefore he more or less accuse me of trying to get away without paying. A dear old soul got up, who I thought was going to hit him with her umbrella and she said 'This lad is fighting for our country' to which I responded 'Don't start another war we have enough with this one against Hitler'. Once in Hull's Paragon station I was taken to the station master's office where the ticket collector explained that he thought I had tried to get away without paying, so I told my side of the story and said 'If you don't believe me ring Haverhill station and they will confirm what I have said'. I eventually got my return ticket.
Not long after returning to Stradishall, 138 Squadron was transferred to Tempsford and I was issued with a travel warrant to go to Upper Heyford in Northants. On arrival I reported to the guard room to present myself and they directed me to the orderly room where, after a while, an officer entered and asked 'Where have you come from ?', 'Stradishall' I replied. The office [sic] then informed me that I was not supposed to be there and said 'We will find you a bed until we can ascertain where you should be'. I was then taken to the cookhouse [sic] for a well deserved meal before being shown to my temporary billet.
Whilst at Stradishall I had written home to let the family know that I was being transferred to another camp and would write again when I got there.
I was at Upper Heyford for about a week before being informed that I should have been transferred to Wyton in Huntingdonshire, so you can imagine my mother's surprise when the police came to her house to see if I was there as I had not arrived at my designated camp on time.
After a while I was told to collect my belongings and that an Anson aircraft would fly me to Wyton. 'Good' I thought, my first flight, so off I went to the orderly room where I was surprised to find out that the aircraft had developed a fault and that I would now have travel by train. I was issued with a railway warrant to Huntingdon, which happened to be the nearest station to the camp, and then driven to the station where I was seen onto the train and off I went, thinking that they were glad to get rid of me.
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I eventually arrived at Wyton in late 1942, to join 109 Squadron of the Pathfinder Force, only to face a Court of Enquiry over the fiasco of my transfer and in simple terms it went something like this - Where have you been? your [sic] telling us that you passed through Kings Cross station and were not stopped although we have had the MPs (Military Police) looking for you, they were puzzled! Following my explanation a called[?] was placed to Upper Heyford to verify that I had been telling the truth.
I then settled into my new billet which was occupied by other armourers and when I told them what had happened they all had a good laugh, they knew a new armourer had arrived.
My first order of business was to write a letter home to let them known [sic] that I had arrived, give them my new address and an idea of what had happened to accounted [sic] for the delay in writing.
When I arrived home on my next leave my mother was in a very agitated state as she wanted to know where I had been and why MPs were looking for me. I explained what had transpired and that it was the fault of the orderly room at Stradishall, as they had sent me to the wrong RAF camp, she was pleased that her son hadn't gone AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave) as was first thought.
Following my return to camp the work really started with my first job on an aircraft being fit [sic] a new cartridge chute in the rear turret of a Wellington bomber, affectionately known as the 'Wimpy', which had been brought into the hanger for inspection. It was then taken out onto the runway apron so that the engines could be run-up before it was taken to the dispersal point and knowing I could get a lift back to the hanger I went with the aircraft to check that the turret operated correctly. While onboard [sic] I thought that the pilot was revving the engines up as a test however when I looked out through the rear turret I saw the runway moving away, we were airborne, and it was at this point that panic set in as I didn't have a parachute. I then made my way unsteadily up the fuselage and said to one of the Bods, our name for airmen, "I haven't got a parachute" to which he calmly replied, "Don't worry, none of us have". That was reassuring up to a point, so I made my way back to the rear turret and climber in to enjoy the tail-end Charlie's (rear gunner) view of the countryside. Once we had landed one of the lads asked "Have you flown before?" to which I replied "No that was my first flight", he was surprised and remarked "You're the first one I've seen that was capable of walking in a straight line after his first flight".
Once while working on the front turret of a 'Wimpy' I looked out and saw the Commanding Officer and the Duke of Kent standing on the tarmac.
Wyton was a nice location being handy for the Huntingdon headquarters of 8 Group Pathfinder Force and I also found out that Oliver Cromwell had attended the grammar school in Huntingdon.
My elder brother was medically exempt from service so he and his future wife came down for a holiday at Godmanchester, which was just down the road from Huntingdon, making it possible for me to visit them twice while they were there.
Professor Cox, the inventor of the Target Indicator Bomb and Barometric fuze [sic], came to work at the base and it was the duty of my mate and I to assist him to perfect these, this resulted in us being exempt from postings for three years. The problem we had to overcome was the fact that when the bomb was dropped from an aircraft only half of the 'candles' would burn and it took many attempts before we overcame the problem and got all the 'candles' to burn. On each attempt the bombs were loaded into a Lancaster bomber which then
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flew over Thetford forest where an area had been designated onto which the bombs could be dropped. After each bombing run we would travel to the forest in RAF transport so that we could check the results of the drop, first hand.
Another project we had was to redesign the bomb's tail fins so that four could be carried in the small bomb bay of the Mosquito bomber, as it was their task to mark targets for the main bomber streams.
We also made a device known as a 'screamer' which drove the aerodrome mad with its [sic] noise.
The professor received £20,000 for his inventions, which was in great part due to my mate and my self [sic] helping him to perfect them.
On one occasion the professor put some pieces of 'candle' on a work bench in the armoury and ignited them, talk about technicolour. It also produced a thick black smoke that billowed through the hanger, housing Lancaster and Mosquito bombers, causing someone to call the fire brigade thinking that the hangar was on fire. Following this incident we could have been brought up on charges but fortunately the blame fell on the professor who received a serious dressing down for his antics.
Whilst at Wyton I unfortunately contracted oil dermatitis and was hospitalised for quite a while during which time my face was regularly painted with a violet liquid however it didn't do much to help the condition but it did stop it spreading. When the senior Medical Officer went on leave a junior Medical Officer asked "Will you be a guinea pig for me?" and as I had nothing to loose said "Yes". He later came back with a pot of cream, he had concocted it himself, which he then smeared onto my face and miraculously by the end of the week all that was left on my face were red blotches. When the senior Medical Officer returned from leave he found out what had happened and the junior Medical Officer and I got it in the neck however I pointed out to him that the dermatitis had cleared up and with that he stormed off. Some while later the junior Medical Officer came back to to see me and apologised for getting me in to [sic] hot water, he had brought me another jar of him cream but fortunately I didn't need to use it again. I was given a week's sick leave and hoped that the junior Medical Officer would make his fortune after the war.
It was a lovely walk from Wyton to St. Ives, passing through Houghton, across the meadow to Houghton water mill, along the river bank and through a bird sanctuary where on a summers evening bird songs could be heard. On the way we would stop off at Hemmingford Grey which had a good canteen and from here, as in St. Ives, you could go boating. One Sunday my mate and I went to an evening service in St. Ives after which the minister invited us back to the vicarage for supper and this was followed by a game of bowls, on a lovely lawn.
Wyton was the only base I was stationed at that has a bomb dump across the road from the camp, the road being the one from Huntingdon to Warboys, fortunately in those days there was very little traffic about.
In early 1943, 156 Squadron, the second on the base, moved to Warboys which was just down the road from Wyton therefore it was still handy for a cycle rise to Huntingdon.
Our billets were Nissen huts dispersed throughout the woods however if you were in them when all the aircraft took-off the huts would vibrate however to me the noise of the aircraft was a lovely sound.
One evening my mate and I went for a cycle ride and came into a small village called Benwick where we stopped at the local pub for a drink. We wandered out to the back of the pub where we met a lovely family
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with whom we started chatting and they asked if we would like a game of bowls, we said that we hadn't played before and they told us it was easy. Off we went to a well kept bowling green for our match and we won as my bowls rolled into the right place, to which they remarked "You must have played before, you have the knack for it and got the bias right", "No" I replied "Beginners luck". They invited us back to their home for supper and said we were welcome to visit whenever we had any spare time. When we were going on leave they would asked [sic] us to come over if we had the time and they would give us eggs and sometime [sic] a chicken to take home.
They had two small sons and a little 18 month old daughter for whom I made a dolls bed, which she still has, and after the war I spent a holiday with them, including a day trip to Hunstanton. Unfortunately the daughter is now the only member of the family left however we still keep in touch regularly and I send flowers on her birthday and at Christmas, this is the least I can do after all the family's kindness shown us during the war.
While stationed at Warboys I got engaged to a WAAF who worked in the telephone exchange where I worked the switchboard once or twice, and here they used to cook for themselves so if they got any kidney when I was going on leave they would give me it to take home, as they didn't like it, this made a tasty treat for my family.
When an aircraft came into the hanger for servicing I would ask the pilot if he was going up on a test flight and if he was I would ask his permission to go up with him, under the pretext of testing the turrets, etc. These were exciting trips as the pilot would hedge-hop the plane, flying low over the meadows and at times you would see a train almost level with you. Near the coast was a farm house and if there was any washing hung out the pilot would fly low over the Ouse and then nose-up so that the washing would blow off the line if it was not pegged tightly onto it, by which time we would be out over the Wash.
On my second flight in a Lancaster the pilot knew I was going up with him and I positioned myself in the mid-upper gunner's turret to enjoy the view. After a while I began to feel really light headed when suddenly there was a tug on my leg from one of the crew, he asked "How long have you been up there" to which I replied "Ever since take-off". "Hell" he retorted "Quick, plug this in to the intercom so that I can speak to the pilot", he then gave me a mask to put on and told me to plug it into the oxygen system. There was no wonder I was feeling light headed and exhilarated as we were flying at a fairly high altitude which meant that I had begun to suffering [sic] from a lack of oxygen and if we had descended quickly it would have damaged my ears.
I soon recovered and once out over the Wash I tested the guns and began to traverse the hydraulic turret, it stopped working and I thought what's wrong now, so I started to traverse the turret manually. At that point I noticed we were flying on one engine and once again panic set in as I wasn't wearing a parachute but fortunately the other engines started up and we were flying on all four engines again. Once on the ground the pilot came up to me and said "Sorry about that, I forgot you had come along, it was a good job one of the crew found you when he did otherwise I could have done you a lot of damage". I then asked him about flying on one engine and he responded "We often do that because the Lancaster can fly on one engine". That was a flight I will never forget and I later read a book by Wing Commander Guy Gibson in which he mentioned flying his aircraft on one engine.
As armourers we were an ingenious bunch so in our dinner breaks we would fabricate cigarette lighter [sic] out of 0.303" and 0.5" calibre 'rounds' and other odds and ends. Firstly the bullet was removed from the cartridge case and the propellant charge (cordite) tipped out, next came the dangerous part, the end of a file was
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placed on the percussion cap in the base of the casing and then wrapped in a large wad of rags before the file was hit with a hammer, which would detonate the percussion cap with a bang, but unfortunately my mate lost a finger doing this as he didn't use enough rag wadding. We also fashioned Spitfires from halfpenny pieces, these looked nice when polished and crafted model planes from pieces of clear perspex. Another profitable business was making Dutchess [sic] Sets using square and oblong frames into which nails were fixed every half inch and silk threads criss-crossed between them and knotted, they made lovely presents.
I made my nephew a fort out of old ammunition boxes which I took home in pieces, it was that solid you could stand on it, and also managed to obtain an old parachute for my mother, who being a seamstress made good use of it.
Another perk of the job came when a new Lancaster arrived on base as it had thermos flasks, so it was a mad rush to be one of the first to the dispersal point to grab one, which I managed to do.
While serving at Warboys I was promoted to corporal and asked if I would like to go back to school to learn about bombs and fuzes [sic] as this would mean another promotion to sergeant and an increase in pay. At that time I was a fitter armourer (guns) and already involved with bombing-up and de-bombing plus having worked with Professor Cox I already knew a great deal about the Target Indicator Bomb and the Barometric fuze [sic] therefore I declined the offer, I thought to myself that money wasn't ever thing but good mates were, especially at the height of the war, and anyway it would be a waste of my time plus it meant moving into the sergeant's mess.
[/bold] March 1944 [/end bold] 156 Squadron moved to Upwood however my mate and I were still able to visit our friends at Benwick.
One day on camp, while aircraft were being bombed-up for an operation, there was a terrible accident as a bomb exploded with horrendous force, creating a massive crater and the intense shock wave that followed rippled the structure of three Lancasters [sic] making them look as if they had been made from corrugated iron. Fortunately I was in the guard room, having just returned from leave, as the force of the explosion hurled debris over the building. They [sic] following day the crater was searched but nothing was found and we never really knew what had happened, although one train of thought was that someone had accidentally knocked a barometric fuze [sic] causing it to detonate the bomb.
Following this incident the billet was a very sombre place with so many empty beds, so many mates lost, and there was only one funeral from the camp, that of a WAAF driver who was buried in Upwood church cemetery.
When at Upwood it was possible for me to go to Ramsey and board a train for Peterborough, which connected to the main line, and at that time this journey cost around two shillings which in today's money would be around ten pence. From Peterborough I caught a train for York and then one to Cottingham station, but it was late at night when I arrived and there was no one on duty.
The next day I though [sic] I could get back to Ramsey cheaply so I got a single rail ticket from Hull to Brough and was on my way, or so I thought, because just as I was about to board the train I got a tap on the shoulder, it was an inspector and at this point panic set in. He asked "Why are you catching this train" and with a bit of quick thinking I replied "Argyle Street was bombed last night and my boss brought me home to make sure everything was OK and I have to be back on duty by 12.30". The inspector then asked "Which side of the train will you get off at Brough" and as I had local knowledge I replied "That side", pointing to the opposite
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side of the train, he then let me get on. Once onboard [sic] I went right down the train and hid it [sic] the toilet until the train departed, just in case the inspector had got on. I managed to get all the way back to Ramsey on that ticket and it was fortunate that there was no one at the other end to check it however all the way back my nerves were on edge in case a conductor came round and asked to see my ticket, needless to say I never did that again, once was enough.
One date of note was the 10th February 1944 as this was when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the base and it was a bitterly cold frosty morning. The armoury was opposite the officer's mess outside which the guard of honour had formed-up and because it was so cold the officer in charge decided to take them for a run up the road to keep warm. However, just as they turned back the royal party came into view so they had to make a hasty dash back, at the double, to be in place for the royal salute and as we had a great vantage point it gave us a good laugh.
There was a lot of hard work prior to the visit as we painted the curbing stone white, painting them black again after the visit, cleaned the inside of a Lancaster, which was due on ops that night, and washed a hanger floor with petrol, all this for a royal visit, it would have been better for them to have seen it as it was. Somehow what we had done made the papers and we were all confined to camp for a week.
On the 6th June 1944 all the armourers were called out at first light to refit the front turret back into all our Lancasters. We had removed the turrets some months earlier, which gave the aircraft a 25mph increased [sic] in air speed, however the Germans had caught-onto this and began attacking the aircraft from the front because the mid-upper turret guns could not be depressed enough to give adequate frontal covering fire.
The turrets had to be fitted as quickly as possible during that day as the aircraft were needed for ops that night. Cranes were used to lift the complete turret but as we had no scaffolding the only way to fit then [sic] was for us to go in through the pilot's escape hatch and out onto the front of the fuselage to guide the turrets into position, no health and safety rules to follow in those day [sic] which meant that one slip and you would end up head first on the concrete. Once a turret was in position it was fairly straight forward job to connect up the hydraulic lines, fit the covers and check its operation however due to the urgency of the job we had to work without normal breaks so our food was brought out to us and surprisingly we completed the task in time.
I remember it was a cold day with light drizzle however our spirits were lifted when we saw the sky fill with aircraft of all types, some towing gliders, we all shouted "D-Day has started", and I thought it was the most magnificent sight I had ever seen. Due to that days hard work all our aircraft took off on ops that night and we were given the following day off, which we needed as we were bone weary and very wet.
On the 1st January 1945 the New Years Honours List came out and I was surprised to see that I had been mentioned in despatches, quite an honour, and much to mu mother's delight.
At the end of the war, if I had been serving on a permanent aerodrome I would have remained in the RAF, the service that I loved, but unfortunately I was posted to a satellite aerodrome at Stour-on-the-Wold near Stratford-apon-Avon. Here life became tedious with nothing to do but look after 52 rifles in the armoury, a dummy 4,000lb bomb in the bomb dump, there was no paperwork to do and nobody seemed to know what was going on. Somebody delivered a further 20 rifles to the armoury and I asked him "Why have you brought them here" to which he replied "We don't want them" and off he went, this was now the nature of the job.
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Later when demob came I was glad to leave, so off I went to Cardington where I was given a medical and a demob suit together with my discharge papers, a book of money orders to cover demob leave and a rail warrant home. After several weeks of demob leave I once again became a civilian, back to a so called normal life.
In late 1946 I returned to my job at Waite's grocery shop. then in early 1947 I broke off my engagement with the WAAF girl, who was a Londoner, and later started dating a local girl called Lucy Ann Baitson, who also worked in Waite's shop. She lived at Mill Lane in Swanland and we eventually got married at All Saints church in North Ferriby in 1949, but tragically she dies in 1979.
After a long and varied career I finished my working life as chief storeman [sic] at Everthorpe borstal.
Just a note about Wing Commander Don Bennet, a great man who unfortunately never received the recognition or honour that he deserved for his efforts during [the] war. On the 27th April 1942 he became the Commanding Officer of 10 Squadron and while flying a Halifax bomber on a raid over Norway, to bomb the German battleship "Turpitz" in Trodhiam [sic] fjord, he was shot down. Fortunately he managed to escape capture and reached Sweden from where he returned to England via the BOAC Courier Service, ensconced in the bomb bay of a Mosquito bomber. On his return of duty Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris made him the Commanding Officer of 8 Group Pathfinder Force and later after his death his ashes were interred under the RAF Memorial on Plymouth Hoe.
Now, nearly 70 years on, having been ignored after the war by Winston Churchill, the man who said "We had to bomb Dresden", a remark which many still remember today, our brave bomber crews have finally been given the recognition they readily deserve. In Green Park, London, a splendid permanent memorial has been erected, consisting of a sculpture depicting a bomber crew mounted on a large plinth and housed in a grand stone built structure, open on two sides, complete with a dedication to those men.
Having spent the war years serving with bomber squadrons and in hind sight I am now of the opinion that these heroic men should have received the military's [sic] highest awards for what they had to endure. Going out night after night on bombing missions over mainland Europe, particularly Germany, knowing that they would face the ferocity of the German flak guns, night fighters and searchlights. I saw first hand the severe damaged [sic] inflicted on a lot of those aircraft returning from missions, unfortunately many planes and crews never did return and to be honest I don't know how they did it.
Dublin Core
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Title
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The war memoirs of 1096366 Cpl T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Memoir covers early life, joining and training as a Royal Air Force Armourer and his subsequent wartime career. States that he served on 138 Squadron at Royal Air Force Stradishall and describes its Special Operation Executive operations. Goes on to talk about his postings to Royal Air Force Wyton on 109 Squadron and mentions work on the development of the target indicator barometric fuse. Covers his subsequent move to Royal Air Force Warboys with 156 Squadron and then on to Royal Air Force Upwood and records armourer activity including those on D-Day. Finally talks about the end of the war and decision to leave as well as note about Wing Commander Donald Bennett and the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park.
Creator
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Thomas Waller
Format
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Nine page typewritten document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BWallerTWallerTv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
109 Squadron
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
166 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bomb dump
demobilisation
final resting place
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
Lancaster
medical officer
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Kirkham
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/295/3615/AWallerT151027.2.mp3
fabda2f9ca0e4a33deecf28b4415ef22
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Waller, Tom
Tom Waller
T Waller
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Corporal Thomas Waller (- 2018, 1096366 Royal Air Force) a memoir and photographs. Tom Waller was a fitter/armourer with 138, 109 and 156 Squadrons and served at RAF Stradisall, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, and RAF Upward.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Thomas Waller and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-27
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Waller, T
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So this is an interview with Thomas Waller. It’s at his house in Swanland. It’s the 27th of the 10th 2015. Approximately 10 past 10. My name is Dan Ellin and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. So Mr Waller could you please tell me what you did before the war and before you joined the RAF?
TW: I left school when I was fourteen. Worked on the fish docks. I left there when we came to Swanland in 1936. I went to work at the Blackburn’s which is now British Aerospace at Brough. I couldn’t stand being penned in there so I came and worked in the local village grocery shop. Wednesday was our half day so when I was in town one Wednesday I went in to the recruiting office and joined the RAF. I came home. Mother said, ‘Why did you do that for? You’ll not pass your medical.’ So I said, ‘Ah. Let’s see.’ So I went for my medical and passed A1. And she said, ‘Well you couldn’t have done.’ But I never found out why. So I joined up. Went in for MT driver but I’d joined up just at Dunkirk and they’d lost a lot of armourers in Fairey Battles so I became an armourer. Hadn’t the vaguest idea what it was – came home on leave, home and my brother he was a flight engineer. Ground crew. I said, ‘What’s an armourer?’ He said, ‘Oh guns and bombs.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to do that. I’m not doing that.’ He said, ‘It’s good pay. Good promotion.’ I said, ‘Money’s not everything.’ Anyhow, I went. Got on the course. And the lad next to me said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do this.’ So we filed up and down. Up and down. The tutor came around and said, ‘You two can stop messing about. Get on with it because we know you can do it.’ So we did. So we passed out flying colours so went out there in the armoury after it had finished. An officer come along and says, ‘Those whose names I call out please step forward.’ My name was called out. Go for fitter armourer to Credenhill in Hereford. So my mate said, ‘We didn’t want to do that, did we?’ I said, ‘No. But we’ll have to go won’t we?’ So we went and we enjoyed it and we got through that course alright and then I was posted to Stradishall. 138 Squadron. SOE Squadron. I wasn’t there very long because Tempsford was its main base and they decided to put all the SOE section together. So they transferred me to Wyton. But instead of Stradishall sending me to Wyton they sent me to Upper Heyford. So, when I got there they said, ‘Where have you come from?’ I said, ‘Stradishall.’ ‘Well you’re not supposed to be here mate.’ I said, ‘Well I have a railway warrant for here.’ ‘Well, we’ll fetch you up a bed for the night and feed you and see.’ I was there for a week and then they said, ‘We’ve found out where you should have been. You should be at Wyton.’ So they said, ‘Get your kit ready and come down to the orderly room tomorrow morning. Half past eight. We’re flying you over in an Anson.’ Oh, I thought lovely. My first flight. Here I go. I got to the orderly room. ‘You’re going by train.’ It’s got a snag. They took me to the station. Stood there. Thought got to get rid of him and make sure he gets on the train. So when I got to Wyton they said, ‘Where have you been?’ I said, ‘I’ve been at Upper Heyford.’ ‘Well what did you go there for?’ I said, ‘Well that’s my railway warrant.’ You know. So he said, ‘Well have you come through King’s Cross?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said. ‘Have you been stopped by the police?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’ve got them at your house looking for you.’ So I said, ‘No wonder my mother was agitated.’ So I settled down there and then, you know [pause] I eventually got to Wyton and the lads said, ‘Oh you’re our new armourer are you?’ So, I said, ‘Yes sir.’ They said, ‘Right.’ So we got settled in. Got working on the aircraft and then came home on leave. Got back off leave. Just got to the guard room and there was a terrific explosion. All the people came out the guardroom, the guard chaps. There’d been an explosion there, hadn’t there. Now had I been, not been on leave I wouldn’t be here now. So I’m one of the lucky ones and the billets at night with all the empty beds. It was really horrible to see it, you know. So we plodded on. Carried on. And then I was transferred from Wyton to [pause] from Stradishall. I went to Wyton and from Wyton I went to Warboys. To 156 Squadron. Start of Pathfinder force. And then they transferred over to Upwood and I went over to Upwood. And then I was there till 1946 and I was sent to a satellite drome near Stratford on Avon. With a dummy four pounder in the bomb dump, fifty rifles in the armoury. I was a corporal and there was me and another lad there with nothing to do. So when demob come I was glad to get out. But if I’d been on a proper station I would have stopped in because I really enjoyed the life. So I came home. Went back to my job in the village. And then at that time I was engaged to a WAAF in London so I got a job with Barclays Baking Machines. Went down to their factory in London and trained to be a mechanic. Service mechanic for the area. So we came back home again. But my lady friend said, ‘I’m not going to Swanland to live.’ So that brought that up. So I did it but I had to give it up because I didn’t have the money to buy a car or a motorbike and doing all the villages. And I walked from Holme on Spalding Moor to Easingwould carrying a wooden box with all my kit in. And I were going, and I went to one place, Newbold. And you’re allowed an hour and a half to service a machine and when I got there I had a new blade to put on. There were only a bus in the morning and one at night [laughs] so I panicked. I got it on. So I gave the manager my address. I said, ‘If anything happens send me a telegram and,’ I said, ‘I’ll come over,’ you know. Anyhow, everything was alright, thank goodness. So, but it was having walking from one village to another and buses it was that awkward so I gave it up. And I came back to the local shop again. Met a local girl and got married. And then I went to work for a local multiple store. Cousins. Down in Ferriby. And I used to go into the shop on the corner, a big shop on the corner where, down where we lived on a Sunday morning to do the bale machine for him and sort his yard out for him. So one day he said, ‘Would you like to come and work for me? I’ll give you a pound more than what you’d do down there.’ A pound in them days was a lot of money. And I had four children then. So I said, ‘Oh yes. Yeah.’ So I came and I was there for nineteen years. And then he brought his nephew into the business and of course he fell out with everybody. Fell out with me. It was horrible to work in. I was fifty five then and I thought where I go from here. Anyhow, Everthorpe Prison was advertising for a canteen manager’s assistant storeman. So I applied for the job. Went for the interview and then I got a letter saying no. The other man was there. He’d been a manager but I’d never been a manager. Anyhow, on the Monday they rang me up. Was I still interested in the job? I said why. Well the manager walked into the canteen on the Friday dinnertime and walked out. He said, ‘I’m not doing this.’ So he said, ‘The job is yours if you want.’ So I did nine and a half years there and took early retirement. So then my hobby was decorating. So I had a little business decorating.
DE: Right. I see. So you, going back to when you were working in, in the grocer’s shop and you had your early day off on Wednesday afternoon.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Why did you decide to join the RAF?
TW: I just did it on impulse. No real reason. I just, I just thought I’d go, you know. My brother was in the RAF so maybe that was one of the things as well, like, you know.
DE: Did you consider any of the other services?
TW: No. Never. If anything it was always going to be the RAF. So I got what I wanted but I didn’t get the job wanted.
DE: No. Because you wanted to drive.
TW: I wanted to drive. Yeah.
DE: Why. Why did you want to drive?
TW: I was always interested in driving and I learned to drive when I was at the village shop so. But I never passed a driving test. Because when the war came in 1939 just, just as I was taking mine and I’d only done driving down country roads and I did my test in the town. And I’d never been in front of a policeman before. And in Hull, there was a street in Hull where it was just a snake of people because when we had the ferry you’d see people going down , down the outside to the ferry. The policeman was waving me on you see and saying, ‘You’ve got to go hadn’t you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, They’ve got to move for you,’ you know. He said, ‘Well, your driving’s alright but you need more experience in the town.’ Well the war came so I kept my licence going and it became a full licence after the war so –
DE: I see.
TW: So me being a clever man, I taught my eldest son to drive. So I said to him, ‘Well we’ll finish you off at a driving school because I’ve never passed a driving test.’ So I got these people to come. So I said, ‘No. I’ve never passed a driving test. But,’ I said, ‘I’ve done my best so will you take him and finish him off.’ So they went and they came back and they both got out the car and folded their arms. He said, ‘You taught him to drive.’ I thought – here it comes. He says, ‘We can’t fault him anywhere. We don’t know how he didn’t pass the test. He said, ‘We’re putting him for his test straight away because he’s brilliant.’
DE: Wonderful.
TW: I always say to him now, ‘Now you didn’t listen to what I said to you? Did you?’ He borrowed my car once. He said he wanted to follow the RAC rally. I said yes. It was in November and it was snowy and icy. I said, ‘Go to Harrogate and Howard House but whatever you do do no go on the moors.’ ‘Ok dad.’ 3 o’clock in the morning a neighbour came down, ‘They’ve had an accident.’ ‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, ‘I’ll kill him when he gets home.’ Looked out the window when I heard this wagon outside a few hours later. Looked out. I said, ‘Look at my car. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’ ‘Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.’ I said, ‘What did I tell you?’ ‘Well.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘But when you was driving the car you were in charge of the car. You should have done what I told you.’ So every time we go up on to the moors there’s an archway. ‘That’s where I had my crash dad.’ I said, ‘Don’t keep reminding me.’
DE: Oh dear. So the RAF didn’t want you to be a driver. They sent you on the armourer’s course.
TW: Sent me on the armoury course because at that time – Dunkirk and we’d lost a lot of armourers on Fairey Battles apparently. So, and they were short of armourers so that was it.
DE: So what did the course entail?
TW: Well, it entailed making little parts for guns and that and then you sort of went on to turrets and how to look after guns and how to sort the turrets out and that, then finished that armourers course, called out outside. Then this officer calls through, ‘These names please come forward.’ So we stepped forward. We all went to be fitter armourers. I went to be fitter armourer. Should have been general if I wanted to go on bombs but I was just fitter armourer but I ended up doing everything. You know. Bombing up and everything. So [pause]
DE: And what was it like on an, on an operational station?
TW: Oh it was fantastic. The spirit amongst the lads and that. Yeah. They were brilliant. And the aircrew were brilliant as well. Especially if they’d been in a hangar for a service. You saw the pilot, ‘Are you going up for a flight? Can I come with you?’ ‘Yeah.’ So, the first time I went up it was in a Wellington. Well that was by mistake because it had been in the hangar for a service and they took it out on to the airfield and revved the engines up and then they usually took the crew down to the dispersal points. So I thought well I can go down. Get a lift back. So I went and I thought he’s revving his engines up. Well it was running up. ‘I haven’t got a parachute.’ ‘Don’t worry. None of us,’ there were two other bods there, ‘None of us have parachutes. Don’t worry.’ So any chance after that I got. So the Lancaster was next. So I said to the pilot, ‘Are you going up?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So I went with him. So I was felt real happy and light headed. I thought oh this is lovely you know. I got a tug on my leg and this chap said, ‘How long have you been up there mate?’ I said to ten. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘Plug this into the intercom. Plug this in to the oxygen because if we come down quickly it’ll blow your ears out.’ Got on to the pilot, this, told him I was up there. So, anyway and then we got out over The Wash. I thought – panic. Only one engine. I thought, what’s happening? What’s happening? So when we got back I said, I said to the pilot, ‘How did you manage to fly on one engine?’ ‘Oh don’t worry.’ He said, ‘That Lancaster can fly on one engine.’ He said, ‘Guy Gibson’s done it.’ I thought, I said, ‘Thank God for that.’ I said. But he said, ‘I’d forgotten you was up there mate. It’s a good job the chappie saw. Saw your legs hanging down. Because,’ he said, ‘It put me in a spin because I could have damaged your ears if I’d come down too quick.’
DE: Where were you? In the mid-upper turret?
TW: In the mid-upper turret. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely sight from out there. And then when D-day started we was called out because previous to D-day – well about six months before we took all the front turrets out of the Lancasters because it gave them twenty five miles an hour more speed. So when D- day started we was all called out of the aerodrome to put these turrets back in again. Drizzling with rain. Just getting, it was just getting light. So I was out of the nose of the Lancaster guiding this turret in and the sky turned black. And all these aircraft come over with the white markings on and I shouted, ‘D-day’s started, D-day’s started.’ The most fantastic sight. So, we got, we got all the turrets put back in again. We had to – the time I was in the pilot’s cockpit. No scaffolding. Health and safety today would go up the wall because the only scaffolding they had was for the engine people. So you had to climb out over the and crawl along a little but to the turret to guide it in and check if you wanted. If anything had happened inside. Check nothing loose. It was moving slow. Check that there were no oil leaks. So you had to take the cover off and check the oil pipes and that and put it back on. They’d grab you by your collar and turn you around and you’d go back in head first.
DE: That sounds like a really interesting job that.
TW: It was. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. As I say had I been on a proper ‘drome when the war finished I would have stopped in. I did really enjoy it.
DE: What other sort of things did they have you doing then?
TW: Being a gunner armourer I should never have been on bombs. But I was put on to a bombing up crew. I mean I didn’t know anything about the fuses or anything but I was putting fuses in and then we got – when we got Mosquitoes they couldn’t get four target indicator bombs on. So I had to shorten the tails till we could get four target indicator bombs on. So we got that sorted out.
DE: What were target indicator bombs like then?
TW: They were, well I think they were about two hundred and fifty pounds and that and they had about a hundred candles in. So when it dropped all the candles came out and should have burned but they didn’t. But we’d be, we got pressed for – Professor Cox came down and we helped him to perfect this so that when they dropped if they snapped everything burned. So we used to go to Thetford Forest. Got it on to a Lancaster. Go to Thetford Forest. Wait for it to be dropped. Go and see. Our fourth attempt was a successful attempt so we achieved something.
DE: So did you have four different prototypes then? Is that how it, how it worked?
TW: Yeah. You did one and put it to one side. Then marked it number one. Then number two, number three, number four. And of course when number four dropped it cracked but with having the metal rods down the cap it didn’t – it didn’t snap the rods. So it all burned when it fell.
DE: I see.
TW: Yeah. So, so we was coming back from Thetford when the war finished, one time, we said, ‘What’s everybody cheering for?’ You know. We stopped and asked somebody. ‘Well the war’s over.’ So that was nice surprise for us coming back again.
DE: So what were the conditions like on the stations that you were working on?
TW: The worst one was Stradishall because it wasn’t a proper ablutions. It was more open than that. Very basic. But the rest of them were fantastic. Beautiful toilets and showers and everything. And the barracks were good as well. There was, you used to get each station I’d been on after that there were the parade ground and then there was four blocks at each corner of the parade ground. Four blocks of houses. For people, for the crews. The airmen to be in. So then you went off to your, on to the ‘drome and then you went on to your armoury and did your business.
DE: Right. So could you describe a typical working day then for me?
TW: We’d have breakfast and then start about 8 o’clock and you’d sort of check your turrets over and then go and have your dinner and then come back. And if there ops on you would, I would be bombing up which I shouldn’t have been and then you stood there for them to go off and if you was conscientious you were there for when they came back again. But that was the worst part. Waiting for them to come back again. ‘Cause you would think if yours was the last one in and it hadn’t arrived. You’d say, well there was another one to come in yet? Another one to come in yet? And he’d come limping in. Probably be shot up a bit and a bit of damage on the wings and that. Our aircrew were good. They never made any bones or anything if they were hurt or anything. Because one day we had the Americans come in. The fighters shot the ‘drome up right down the runway. Then the B17 came in. Got out, ‘Where’s the blood wagon? Where’s the blood wagon?’ Kissing the ground. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. My brother, my brother was all for, all for the Americans. I said, ‘Well, you can have them. You can go over there and live with them.’ I said, ‘From what I’ve seen of them I think they’re pathetic.’ Then we used to go to the pictures in Huntingdon. We was coming out one day and Clark Gable, the film star, was walking in. Oh there’s Clark Gable there. With it being Americans there you see. Huntingdon was the nearest with a cinema so they used to come there.
DE: So what other things did you do when you had an evening off then?
TW: Well, when I had an evening off we, sometimes my mate and I would go right around the villages and then we got to this little village of Benwick. So we stopped and went in to the pub and got a drink and went outside at the back because they had a lovely bowling green at the back. And we sat and there was a couple sat next to us. So they asked, ‘Are you from the local ‘drome?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Would you like a game of bowls?’ So I said, ‘Oh I’ve never played bowls.’ My mate said, ‘Oh come.’ We won them [laughs] and so they said, ‘Are you sure you’ve never played before?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You’ve managed to get the right bias on the bowls because you managed to get them through, you know.’ So, anyhow they invited us over to, for supper. And we used to go over regular and they had two boys and a girl. Now, the girl she’s what, she’ll be in her seventies now. We’re still in contact with one another. I made her a doll’s bed. She had two boys. Her boys had boys but she’s still got the bed. She said, ‘I might get a great granddaughter one day so I’ll pass it on to her.’ So we were regularly in contact with her because the family were fantastic to go to. You come home on leave, ‘Are you going on leave?’ He said. ‘I’ll come around night before and we’ll give you some eggs.’ Come home with some eggs. And sometimes you’d come home with a chicken. My mother didn’t know she were born. When I was going with a WAAF in the telephone exchange and they used to cook for themselves so if they got kidneys and I was coming home on leave they‘d give me the kidneys because they never ate them.
DE: Right.
TW: So mother would have my kidneys which was a luxury in them days. Couldn’t get them from the butcher and that. So she did well did my mother with eggs and that. But my brother was a rogue. I came, on the first leave I came home on leave he was home on leave. So, I gave my mother my ration card and the money. She said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘Well, my ration money.’ So she said, ‘Well Maurice never give me it.’ Give it me back. And do you know what he said? ‘It’s something that’s just started.’
DE: Oh. I see.
TW: I said, ‘No. It’s been going on since you’ve been in the forces so don’t talk daft.’ But her blue eyed boy could do no wrong could my eldest brother.
DE: And what was – what was he? Did you say he was –?
TW: He was an engineer but he had a painting and decorating business before the war.
DE: Right.
TW: But he was stupid. Get a lad to. Employed a lad to work when he should be working himself. And of course when the war started his business flopped because he had a load of credit. So after the war my mother said, ‘If anybody asks where Maurice is you don’t know.’ He went into partnership with a chap and I used to work with a chap at the bottom of the road here and his partner used to come to me for a box of matches and look at me because before the war I didn’t wear glasses. After the war I were wearing glasses. He’d look at me and he’d go outside and he’d be pondering. And he came every week. I thought well I know who you are mate but I’m not going to make myself known to you [laughs] Oh dear. So those were the days.
DE: You, you mentioned a bit earlier on about an, about an explosion.
TW: Yeah. That must, must have been when they were bombing up. Because I was coming back off leave so it had to be an evening one. And I just got through the gate and there was this terrific explosion. And the chap said, ‘By. Something’s gone up there.’ You know. So the next day we had to go out on to the drome. Looking in the crater. See if we could find anything. And three Lancasters looked like they’d been made of corrugated iron. All, every bit of them but I don’t know, as far as I can remember I don’t think the tyres had gone down. In the crater you couldn’t find a thing. And the only funeral from there was a WAAF driver. And she was stood at one of the Lancasters with a crew wagon and she was the only one that was killed. She was buried in Bransby churchyard.
DE: I see. And what had happened? Did you ever find out?
TW: All I can think of – it was a barometric fuse. ‘Cause they were very delicate and if they got knocked they could have gone off. And we had a lad from London and I don’t know how he became an armourer because he was thick. And he wasn’t in the billet at night so two of us said, ‘I wonder if it’s him.’ Tried to tighten it up and hit it with a hammer. ‘Cause if he had have done it would have gone off, you know. Because it was the only explanation we could think of ‘cause it couldn’t have gone up otherwise. But never did find out really. There was nothing to piece together to sort things out.
DE: Right. How did that make you feel when you were loading up the bombs?
TW: It didn’t bother me. You don’t. You don’t feel fear. I mean when you’re sat on top of the Lancaster you don’t think about falling off. In them days you didn’t have any fear in you. You was, you was bravado, you know. Fearless. No. It was a good job. I enjoyed it.
DE: How many people worked in the team that were bombing up these aircraft?
TW: It would be about four. It would be one upstairs winding the winch. Two or three downstairs. Especially if it’s putting the four thousand pounder on. To guide it so that it didn’t swing. Otherwise three could have done it because one upstairs doing the and the other two just guiding the bomb up till it got in to, as far as it could get. Until it go into its – I forget what they call it now. It’s anchorage.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do. Mosquitoes were the worst ones to do because you had to get in the back and wind the winch. Nearly crippled you.
DE: This was, this was by hand.
TW: All by hand. Yeah.
DE: Right.
TW: Everything was done by hand. Even the winches in the, winching them up in to the Lancasters. All hand winches. We weren’t modernised technically in them days.
DE: So it was quite hard physical work as well.
TW: It was. Yeah. But it didn’t bother you. You just took it as part of your – what you had to do and you just, you didn’t think about it. It was a job to do and you did it and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it anyhow so.
DE: Did you have any particular friends on any of the stations?
TW: One friend. But we lost contact after the war but we used to go out when we had time off on night time. We used to go out and cycle around the villages and as I say, going to Benwick. This couple. But that was the only one I had. But, I mean, in the group, the armourers, we were all friends and that. But you see you all go your separate ways and your lives change when you go into Civvy Street.
DE: Sure. Yeah.
TW: So you’ve got to adapt.
DE: What about the WAAF? Did you have anything to do with, with them?
TW: Well we’re still, we got engaged. We were still engaged when the war finished. And she came down for a holiday and she said [pause] I’d arranged for take her to see Richard Tauber in Old Chelsea. At the theatre. So we went there and when we came back there used to be an old man sat outside the Station Hotel. And I used to always give him a coin when I passed through. He was a really nice fella. And when, getting off the bus I wanted a halfpenny change but she wouldn’t get off the bus until the conductor come downstairs and give me a halfpenny. Then when we got home she said, ‘What did you waste money for? Going to the theatre.’ I said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I didn’t waste money.’ I said, ‘I treated you.’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen you for months,’ you know. I said, ‘Well what about you? I didn’t complain about you when you said you’d been here, there and everywhere.’ I said, ‘I’ve sat at home knitting a rug. I haven’t been wasting my time. But you’ve been gallivanting. You blamed me because you lost a pen because you had to write to me.’ I said, I’ve stood in – the girl’s on the phone, ‘Ringing you and you weren’t there.’ ‘I was.’ I said, ‘No you weren’t,’ I said. On Edmonton Green apparently there were four telephones and the girls on the exchange used to know me. ‘I’m sorry Mr Waller but there’s nobody there. We’re trying them all.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said I’m wasting my time. So it fell through. So we had a friend who’d been engaged and she’d packed in so she had, when you got engaged you could get dockets and units if you were going to get married. So we got our dockets and units so I managed to get a bedroom suite and two fireside chairs. I bought them. So it’s just before I went down to Edmonton. So I went down to Edmonton. She stood outside the gates of the factory, followed me home to my lodgings and then knocked on my door. And then they said, ‘There’s a lady at the door for you.’ I said, ‘There can’t be.’ She said, ‘Well she’s asking for you.’ ‘What the devil do you want?’ ‘I wondered if you’d like to take me to the pictures tonight.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Clear off.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking you anywhere.’ She sent a great big Pickford’s van down to my, our house to pick some stuff up. I mean the fool. She must have been a fool because I mean, she didn’t know what she was going to send for. And my mother didn’t know anything about it. When this chap got to the front door. ‘What do you mean you –?’ He said, ‘You mean to tell me I’ve come all this way for nothing.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to be collecting like.’ Anyhow, I wrote to her and said, “Why did you send a Pickford’s van down to our house for?” I said, “You didn’t want a Pickford van. A little pickup would have been done.” So she wrote back, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, don’t forget I paid for the bedroom suite. I paid for two fireside chairs. I paid for the tea set we had.” I said the rest of the stuff will just go in a cardboard box.” I said, ‘Just send for a little pickup.’ But you see her father was a police inspector and she thought it might frighten me a bit but it didn’t. So the Pickford van come. He said, ‘This is all I’ve got to pick up is it?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ It was the same man that came before.
DE: Right.
TW: So he said my God. I thought I was coming to fetch a great big mansion box but a little portmanteau thing, you know. But she was [pause] I don’t think I’d have ever married her if it had gone on. She was a bit a one for herself. You know. Yeah.
DE: Sounds like it.
TW: And I was always wrong. And there was me. I had sore fingers from knitting. ‘Cause you couldn’t get canvas in them days so you used to wrap wool around a wooden ruler. Cut it. And then you got the right set. So you knit, put it in, knit a stitch and turn it around. Made some lovely rugs. I was very good at knitting. I knitted my first son’s christening shawl when he was born. Yeah. My sister was useless but I’ve got, I’ve got my mother’s genes because she was court dressmaker was my mother. But she would never help me because when I was growing up I wanted to be a dress designer. Oh no. No. No. No. I’ve dressed dolls as brides and they’re all over the world. I can make them ever week. People wanting them but my mother wouldn’t help me one little bit.
DE: Oh.
TW: And my sister couldn’t even, couldn’t even knit. It took her all her time to sew a button on. I could do the lot. In fact up until my children starting school I made all their clothes for them.
DE: Ok.
TW: Yeah. I was an industrious little lad. Used to have a nice decorating business. Go out at night decorating. And then when I retired I was with the prison service. They said, ‘Are you going down to London for a retirement course? They’ll explain all the things to do for getting a job and that.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘No. No. I’m not going.’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ ‘What do you mean?’ they said. ‘Well I’m going to do my decorating.’ ‘Oh, you’re going on this course.’ I said, ‘I’m not going on a course.’ I went on the course and I made twenty seven quid. I said, ‘What?’ Because I went to the cashiers. They said, ‘How did you get the tools?’ So I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ They said, ‘No. You went by taxi.’ ‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I went on the bus.’ ‘No. Taxi. You got a taxi back as well. When you go to London where do you get a taxi to?’ I said, ‘I didn’t. I walked.’ ‘No you didn’t.’ I said, ‘I walked.’ He said, ‘What hotel did you stay at?’ I said, ‘I didn’t stay at a hotel.’ I said, ‘My brother lived at Hatfield so,’ I said, ‘I commuted each day from there.’ ‘Oh no. You stayed at a hotel. Now that looks a good one. You stayed there’ And I thought, afterwards I thought well that’s all over the country happening. It’s an eye opener sometimes. And that was in the prison service. No. I don’t know.
DE: Strange.
[pause]
DE: I’m just having a look at my notes.
[pause]
DE: Was the, did the different stations feel particularly different? I mean you say you worked with an SOE squadron and you worked for Pathfinders.
TW: No. They’re all types sort of thing, you know. There was no sort of difference in it. The only difference was Wyton. The bomb dump was at the other side the main road.
DE: Right.
TW: But the rest of them were all on the ‘dromes.
DE: I see.
TW: No. But they were all the same, there was no difference in them. Just because they were different squadrons. There were no, the routine was more or less the same all the way through.
DE: Ok. And the target indicator bombs that you were experimenting with in Thetford. Were these the sky markers? Or the –
TW: The sky markers. Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Some some used to drop them in the cloud. A break in the clouds. And others used to drop down on the ground. And they were in different colours so there was a Master Bomber up above directing so if Jerry lit a decoy they’d change the colour. ‘Don’t bomb on red. Bomb on green.’ ‘Don’t bomb on green. Bomb on yellow.’ I wouldn’t like the Master Bombers job. To be up there all the time when the raid was on. Circling around.
DE: Yeah.
TW: No. I enjoyed it though.
[pause]
DE: And you say you, you chose to be demobbed because –
TW: I chose demob because I was on a satellite ‘drome. I had nothing to do and you just got bored. There was nothing you could do about it so you were glad to get out of it in the end. But that’s to say if I’d been on a proper ‘drome I would have stopped in.
DE: Right. I see.
TW: But I wasn’t so –
DE: What was the demob process like?
TW: Dead easy. Mind you I’ve always had a query with it. My demob. Because the medical officer examined me. Went and fetched another doctor. And I wondered why. So I’ve now developed an irregular heart beat so whether that was coming on then I don’t know but I’ve had this sepsis into regular rhythm.
DE: Right.
TW: When I was ninety two. Put me in the cubicle. ‘My God. We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have done that to you at your age.’ The cut off point’s ninety. I said, ‘Well it’s too late now isn’t it?’ He said, ‘Well you won’t get it done again. It’s back to normal. Its back to its regular beat again.’ Yeah. So they can’t do anything about it.
DE: Did you have much to do with the RAF medical services?
TW: No. Never.
DE: No.
TW: I’ve never bothered anybody. British Legion or anybody. I’ve bought my own wheelchair. Bought my own mobility scooter. I’ve a step son won’t part with a thing. He had a leg off. We’ve a wheelchair in there. We’ve a zimmer outside. We’ve two stools. I said, ‘You want to send those back.’ ‘Oh I might need them.’ I said, ‘You won’t need them.’ He won’t part with a thing.
DE: I see.
TW: They’re stood there. Brand new.
DE: Some people are like that though aren’t they?
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. You were showing me before we started the interview this research that you’ve been doing.
TW: Yeah.
DE: About the Halifax bomber crash. Could you tell me a little about that?
TW: Well it happened. We lived in Swanland. We came to Swanland in 1936. My parents left in March 1944. So I came back and knew nothing about it and then and a guy in the village wrote a book and there was a bit about it in there. And we were out one day with the church on an outing and yon side of Gilberdyke there was this model of where Halifaxes had crashed and there was two sort of intertwined. So I said, ‘Something should have been done about those two chaps who were killed in our village. Anyhow, a week or two went by and nothing happened so I thought I’ll take it on myself you see. So I thought he’s buried in Bury so he’s got to be a local lad. Got on to the paper and that. No. Couldn’t find anything about him. There was nothing about him at the cemetery and nothing about him at the War Graves Commission. No address or anything. So I got on to the records office and they rang me up and said, ‘He comes from Nottingham.’ I said, ‘Well, its seventy years since it happened. Can you tell me where?’ ‘Oh no. He came from Nottingham.’ So I wrote to tourist the board in Nottingham and they gave me the address of the radio station and the paper. The local paper were like the Daily Mail in Hull. They were useless. Two little pieces at the bottom. One, the modern Nottingham paper was in the Bygones letters in back of the paper. Two lines at the bottom. And the radio station at Nottingham were brilliant. They did a magnificent programme. But they rang me up to say would I go on the station but I was away on holiday and my son took the call. They said, ‘Well, tell your dad we’ll read out his letter out he sent us. We’d have liked to have him on it but we can’t change a programme now.’ So they wrote to me to tell me what they’d done and then [pause] I’ve got a blockage [pause] So, I got on to the tourist board and they said he’d come from Nottingham. So Radio Nottingham put a programme out and I heard nothing. Now, the other pilot, he came from Tottenham and he’s buried and I knew he was buried near his parents. Now, the War Graves just had the address of the church where he was buried so London University took it over from me but they couldn’t trace any relatives at all then. And then about four months after I started investigating I got a telephone call one night. ‘When are you having the service? I said, ‘What service?’ ‘For the airmen you found.’ I said, ‘I’m not because I haven’t found anybody.’ ‘He said, ‘I’m a nephew.’ He said, ‘We’ve just found out from Australia.’ I said, ‘Australia?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Eastern Australia.’ So how it got over there. Whether he’d been on the internet and that I don’t know. So he said can you arrange it. So I arranged a new service and about fifteen came down. They said, ‘Oh we owe everything to you. We thought he’d been killed over Germany.’ And they said, ‘But we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done. We’ll keep in contact.’ So Christmas come. I got a Christmas card. I’ve written letters. I’ve never heard a thing from them. Now, on the Monday night after it was on television a cousin who knew him – she rang me up. She said, ‘Oh I wish I’d known. I would have been there. Can I come over and see you?’ So she came over and we took her over to show where it crashed and the plaque in the church. And we took her to the cemetery to his grave. And then she said, ‘When was you born? And we found out we were born on the same day so it seems as though fate decreed that I should find him you know. His relatives. And we were keeping in regular contact with her. And we found out that he was with the 1160 Heavy Conversion Unit from Blyton near Gainsborough where he was killed. And so he was killed just up the road from where we live now.
DE: I see. And what, what was it that made you think it was important to tell this story?
TW: Well I think everybody who was in the air force should be recognised if it can be. And being out on this car ride and seeing that I thought well something ought to be done so that’s when I set about doing it. But I didn’t think I’d come against so many brick walls. But you do but you get through in the end you know. But the point I can never understand why his wife had him buried in Beverley. Why she told his family he’d been killed over Germany. There’s something funny there.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And you see all those there was about fifteen came. None of them knew him. There was his sister in law and his brother. Well not his brother because his brother had been killed. But his sister in law there and his nephews and that. But none of them knew him. Even his sister in law didn’t know him. But this cousin she’s brilliant. She keeps in, there’s a photograph in there of her and she always readily comes. What I want now when this gets seed I don’t know how they’re going to work it at the spire. In the plaques. But he’s Cumberworth and so whether they’ll put 1160 Conversion Unit in or not or whether it will just be a plaque with C’s on. Names of C’s.
DE: It’s alphabetical. Yes. I mean –
TW: Yeah. Cause I know a lady in the village she’s been down and she’s found her father’s name. And hers is J so I thought C must be up if J’s. J’s there.
DE: What’s there at the moment is 1 Group and 5 Group.
TW: Oh he must have been in one of them. She’s got – they gave me their memory card to put on the computer and there’s a picture of her pointing to her dad’s name.
DE: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So I think this gentleman will be on –
TW: Cumberworth.
DE: Cumberworth will be on the next lot of names that go up. Yeah. Yeah. Leslie Cumberworth.
TW: So if I can manage to get a photograph sometime I’ll get one.
DE: Yeah.
TW: I can get and get a photograph and send it to his cousin. She’d be really grateful.
DE: Yeah. I’m sure we can arrange that when the names are up.
TW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So you said earlier you’ve never joined any squadron associations or any, any groups.
TW: I’ve joined the RAF Association.
DE: Right.
TW: Yeah. But Hull’s useless. Right from the very start, useless. They said they were short of money. So I did a mini market for them and I raised five hundred pound. And the lady who did the catering she did everything. Paid all her expenses like I do. Pay all expenses so everything you get is profits. I handed that money over to a flight lieutenant in cash and I’ve got a letter of thanks for a receipt. Where did that money go? I’m sure they’d have sent me a receipt if they’d got the money –
DE: Yeah.
TW: But I didn’t realise it at the time. It was afterwards I thought about it you know. And then I went down and I said I’d organise a competition. They said, ‘Oh you can’t do it because you’re not on the committee.’ I said, ‘I’m not joining the committee because I know what would happen. I’d end up doing everything.’ I said I like to everything. So, I said so I was working at Everthorpe then so I got a thousand copies done. So I said if you give every member ten copies you get a pound from every member. That’s a tenner each. If I give you a prize for the winner. So I gave them a lovely Parker, Parker pen and pencil set. That got pinched. ‘Cause they said I said to them when I went down I said, ‘Well you’ve got a prize to go with it so,’ I said, ‘Parker pen and pencil set.’ But it wasn’t there upstairs in the office.
DE: Oh dear.
TW: So I said, ‘Well have you started yet?’ So they said, ‘No. No. They said, so I started, ‘Oh you can’t start it. You’re not on the committee.’ So I said, ‘Have you started that?’ So she said, ‘No, not yet but,’ she said, ‘We’ll buy a prize out of what we make.’ I said, ‘No. I’ll give you another prize.’ When I do a thing I stand the expenses myself. I always have done. So I saw her a fortnight after. Four pound. I said, ‘You what? Four pound?’ I said, ‘I’ve done it twice and I’ve made over fifty pound each time.’ Then in 19 what 60s 70s fifty pound was a lot of money in them days. So I stopped going then ‘cause my son has joined as associate members.
DE: Yeah.
TW: And my daughter in law. Well the third time I went my daughter in law won the jackpot. You should have heard them. ‘You’ve only been here three weeks.’ I said, I went to the bar, I said, ‘Is this the way they go on?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I said we’re supposed to be an air force group,’ I said esprit de corps, where is it?’
DE: Yeah.
TW: I said we’ve joined and paid our money. So I went in one night and I sat in this chair and this woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, she said, ‘That’s my chair.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ She said, ‘That’s my chair.’ So I got up. ‘Well it hasn’t got your name on it.’ So I said, ‘I’m not moving.’ And this was how good our club was. We had a trip to [pause] the memorial down in London. Castleford invited us back for supper. And they did a fantastic spread. Absolutely brilliant. So we invited them down to our club. I went down on the Wednesday night when it was due. There was only me and another fella in the club. The chap behind the bar, he said ‘We don’t usually see you here on a Wednesday night Tom.’ So I said, ‘Well, where is everybody?’ ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Castleford are coming tonight.’ ‘No they’re not.’ ‘Yes they are.’ With that the door opened. They all walked in. So I said, ‘I do apologise but I said, ‘You’ve picked the wrong club to come to because this is useless. This club.’
DE: Oh dear.
TW: I said, ‘I’ve just come in,’ I said, ‘And it’s obvious they’ve forgotten.’ So they had to dash out and buy pie, pea and chips. No. I wouldn’t join no committee. I used to run a coffee morning every Wings week. We raised quite a lot of money. Got some good, one prize we had was a Hornby Double O train set. Folks said, ‘We like your coffee mornings because you always have a good raffle.’ I said it’s the people that you know they can get something from me. Where you go to you know.
DE: Yes.
TW: Very generous. You know.
DE: So apart from that Association what do you think about the way Bomber Command’s been remembered over the last.
TW: Very poor. Very poor. I mean the spire when it was opened. Did BBC do anything about it?
DE: I think –
TW: No. Only local stations. But BBC, I mean there’s all the people around the country in bomber command. BBC should have been doing that as well. I think their biased.
DE: Why do you think that is?
TW: Well, why weren’t they there? I mean you don’t seem to get much about the RAF or anything like that on the BBC.
[pause]
TW: I’m an old man. I do things differently. If I get a letter I answer it straight away. Anything that I’ve done I do it straight away but today it’s so lackadaisical. I mean this cousin of the airman. I sent some things about the Association and some photographs. A month ago. I’ve never had, I rang her up and said I’m sending you this parcel. I’ve never had a telephone call, an email or anything to say she’s got it. I just can’t understand folks.
[pause]
DE: Hello. I’ll just pause it there a moment.
[recording paused]
DE: That’s fine I’ve just started it recording again. Sorry about the interruption. Is there anything else? Any other stories that you think you’d like to tell us?
TW: I don’t think so because we covered it pretty well cause my memory is not as good as it was and I get, I’m talking and I go blank.
DE: I think you’ve done very very well.
TW: Yeah. So but I think no I think we’ve covered it really well.
DE: Just one other thing I think you covered it in the phone conversation when we were arranging this. What do you think about the stories of people like yourself and ground personnel have to tell?
TW: Pardon?
DE: What do you think about the stories of ground personnel? How well do you think they’ve been remembered?
TW: They haven’t. Because somebody was saying if it wasn’t for ground crew the bombs wouldn’t have gone off. But we haven’t been remembered. You never hear anybody talk about us. We’re just a forgotten crew. But I’m not worried because I did my best so. They rewarded me with a mention in dispatches so I can’t complain.
DE: Oh. How. What was the story behind that?
TW: I’ve no idea.
DE: No.
TW: All I can think it was because we helped Professor Cox design his target indicator bomb and alter the tail fins for [pause] to get the bombs on to Mosquitoes. I can’t think of anything else that I’ve done that’s deserving of it. Because getting out on D-day I mean that was just part of the job I think.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So [pause] and my grandson has my medals and my certificate because he’s a keen, very keen on what his granddad’s done. So he said, ‘Can I have your medals granddad.’ So I said, ‘Yeah. You can have that as well.’
DE: That’s wonderful.
TW: Because I know you’ll look after them.
DE: Yeah.
TW: So this is I’ll be able to tell my son. Show his photograph of his granddad and what he’s done. And he’s got my war memoir so he’s got that so. So I’ve got something to show him when he grows up.
DE: Wonderful. Right. So I’ll press pause there and thank you very very much.
TW: Pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Thomas Waller
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-25
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWallerT151027
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.hh:mm:ss
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:56:09 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas Waller volunteered for the Royal Air Force and hoped to be a driver. However, he undertook training as an armourer and was based initially at the Special Operations Executive 138 Squadron. He was posted to RAF Stradishall, RAF Wyton and RAF Warboys. He returned from leave on one occasion and had just arrived back on the station when a massive explosion occured. He helped to develop and test target indicators with Professor Cox. He recently undertook research into the details of a Halifax crash to make sure the airmen were remembered.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Cambridgeshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
138 Squadron
156 Squadron
bombing
bombing up
crash
final resting place
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Stradishall
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
RAF Wyton
sanitation
Special Operations Executive
target indicator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/283/6693/LJonesTJ184141v1.2.pdf
5748d2448d5ea2cadc0c3e9a2aadc8de
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, Thomas John
Tom Jones
T Jones
Description
An account of the resource
62 items. An oral history interview with Peter William Arthur Jones (b. 1954) about his father Thomas John Jones DFC (b. 1921, 1640434 and 184141 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs, correspondence, service documents, aircraft recognition manuals, medals and a memoir. He flew operations as a flight engineer on 622 Squadron Stirling and 7 Squadron on Lancaster. <br /><br />The collection also contains an <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2566">Album</a> of 129 types of aircraft. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Jones and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-12-04
2017-12-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, PW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Tom Jones’ navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air bomber’s and air gunner’s flying log book for Sergeant Tom Jones from 17 August 1943 to 27 August 1945. Detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Served at RAF Mildenhall, RAF Warboys, RAF Oakington, RAF Nutts Corner, RAF Riccall and RAF Dishforth. Aircraft flown were. Stirling, Lancaster, Oxford, C-47 and York. He flew a total of 11-night operations with 622 squadron and 51 operations with 7 squadron pathfinder force. 18 daylight and 33-night operations on the following targets in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland: Aachen, Amiens, Aulnoye, Berlin, Biennias [sic], Cabourg, Cagney [sic], Chalons sur Marne, Chambley, Dortmund, Duisburg, Emden, Essen, Falaise, Fougeres, Foret de l'Isle-Adam, Franceville, Hannover, Homburg, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Kattegat, Kiel, Le Havre, Lille, Liuzeux [sic], Ludwigshafen, Lumbres, Montrichard, Mt Couple [sic], Mantes, Normandy battle area, Oisemont, <span>Œuf-en-Ternois</span> [sic], Renescure, Rennes, Schweinfurt, Skagerrak, St Martin d’Hortiers, Stettin, Stuttgart, Tergnier, Thiverny, Tours, Valenciennes, Venlo aerodrome and V-1 sites. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Phillips DFC, Wing Commander Lockhart and Wing Commander Cox. The log book is well annotated with comments about events during operations.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LJonesTJ184141v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--Kattegat (Baltic Sea)
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Skagerrak
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Amiens
France--Cabourg
France--Chambley Air Base
France--Falaise
France--La Pallice
France--Le Havre
France--Lille
France--L'Isle-Adam
France--Lumbres
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Montrichard
France--Nord (Department)
France--Normandy
France--Nieppe Forest
France--Oise
France--Oisemont (Canton)
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Rennes
France--Somme
France--Tergnier (Canton)
France--Tours
France--Valenciennes
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Netherlands--Venlo
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Poland--Szczecin
France--Neufchâtel-en-Bray
France--Châlons-en-Champagne
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
France--Œuf-en-Ternois
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
1943-09-21
1943-09-22
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-10-02
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-11-18
1943-11-22
1943-11-23
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-20
1944-02-21
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-01
1944-03-02
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-12
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-06
1944-05-07
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-27
1944-06-28
1944-07-01
1944-07-04
1944-07-06
1944-07-08
1944-07-12
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-21
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-08-06
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-11
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-28
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-09-01
1944-09-03
1944-09-05
1944-09-06
1944-09-09
1944-09-10
1944-06-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
1657 HCU
622 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
C-47
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Dishforth
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Nutts Corner
RAF Oakington
RAF Riccall
RAF Stradishall
RAF Warboys
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
V-1
V-weapon
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/83/8020/LCochraneDH1395422v1.1.pdf
9067cdb8a316f66065fb65cd58bfafb2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cochrane, Donald Harvin
Donald Harvin Cochrane
D H Cochrane
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
13 Items. The collections concerns Donald Harvin Cochrane DFM (1926 - 2010, 1395422, Royal Air Force) and consists of his log book, letters, service material, photographs and a memoir. Donald Cochrane completed 29 operations as a wireless operator with 460 Squadron <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pamela Ann Staffel and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Colin Farrant. Additional information on Colin Farrant is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/107397/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cochrane, DH
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Donald Cochrane’s observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Donald Cochrane from 10 January 1944 to 31 August 1944. Detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Served at RAF Stradishall, RAF Feltwell, RAF Binbrook and RAF Seighford. Aircraft flown were Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster. He carried out a total of 29 operations, including two day light operations as a wireless operator with 460 Squadron to the following targets in Belgium, France, and Germany: Schweinfurt, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Essen, Nuremburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Friedrichshafen, Maintenon, Lyons, Mailly, Rennes, Hasselt, Heligoland Bight, Le Clipton, EU Field Battery, Ternier, Bern-Eval-Legrand, St Martin, Vire Railway Bridge, Cerisy Road Junction, Paris, Evreux, Gelsenkirchen, Le Havre and Boulogne. His pilots on operations were Flying Officer Legget and Pilot Officer Mullins. The log book is well annotated and also contains cuttings of pictures of aircraft.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LCochraneDH1395422v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-03-15
1944-03-16
1944-03-18
1944-03-19
1944-03-22
1944-03-23
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-02
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
1944-05-07
1944-05-08
1944-05-11
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-05-31
1944-06-01
1944-06-02
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944-06-07
1944-06-10
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-14
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Staffordshire
England--Suffolk
Atlantic Ocean--Helgoland Bight
Belgium--Hasselt
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Evreux
France--Le Havre
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France--Maintenon
France--Paris
France--Rennes
France--Vire (Calvados)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
France--Lyon
Germany--Düsseldorf
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
1657 HCU
30 OTU
460 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Boulogne E-boats (15/16 June 1944)
bombing of the Le Havre E-boat pens (14/15 June 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Dominie
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Binbrook
RAF Feltwell
RAF Seighford
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/593/8862/PKempMWD1603.2.jpg
915316febaf8fa093e9e3d6664bf2e5a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/593/8862/AKempM160425.1.mp3
98c9f86b0b70f1dafa1862ce137aa0b4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Kemp, Maurice
Maurice William Denton Kemp
M W D Kemp
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kemp, M
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Maurice Kemp (1925 - 2016, 2221885 Royal Air Force), a list of operations and photographs. He served as a mid upper gunner on Lancaster with 115 Squadron in 1945. He carried out 9 operations and then took part in operations Manna and Exodus.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by aurice Kemp and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the Bomber Command Association, I’m with Flight Sergeant Maurice Kemp at his home near Boston in Lincolnshire, 25th April 2016. And Maurice could you just tell me a little bit about yourself, when you were born, where you born?
MK: Yeah I was born at West Keal near West Keal Church up up the top of the road there.
GR: Oh so local.
MK: And I was there till I was about six months old, and then we moved down to a well not really a smallholding but we’d a few acres of land, kept poultry, had a couple of milk cows to make butter, and that’s where I lived until I was about thirteen.
GR: So was mum and dad, dad was a farmer?
MK: Well he was a farm labourer, a farm labourer really but he did have a few acres of land.
GR: Oh right.
MK: You know which he did part time little bit on the side like as well as he went to work during the day and did that at night.
GR: Yes.
MK: I think we’d about eleven acres of grass and two acres of what you would call arable.
GR: Yes. Brothers and sisters?
MK: I had, I had a half-brother, he was seven years older than me, he was illegitimate, my mother had him when she was in the First World War, she was in London in service during the First World War and he was born in 1918. And I stopped there moved to New Leake in 1938, we’ve generally I worked on the land a little bit, I worked on Coningsby Aerodrome for quite a long time in the building process.
GR: So you helped to build?
MK: I helped to build Coningsby Aerodrome.
GR: The aerodrome.
MK: And I was there until such time as it was virtually completed. By that time I was getting on to be seventeen years and I got a driving licence and I started lorry driving the day I was seventeen. I did that for.
GR: Was that working for a local company?
MK: Yeah for a small, well a chap who had three lorries.
GR: Yes.
MK: And I worked for him until such time as I went in the Air Force, and I was in the Air Force a bit less than four years I think.
GR: Did you, obviously you volunteered?
MK: Yeah, yeah, because I was volunteered and I was deferred until my age because going in as a gunner it was
GR: ‘Cos most chaps.
MK: You weren’t allowed to do.
GR: You’d be called up at eighteen?
MK: Eighteen.
GR: And you were allowed to volunteer at seventeen?
MK: Yeah. I was called up at eighteen and a half because you wasn’t allowed to fly on operate operations under nineteen.
GR: Right.
MK: And it was a six month course from starting in the Air Force to get in there and that’s what I did.
GR: Was that always the case then during the war or was it something that came in later on?
MK: I don’t know it was always the case but it was the case in mine. I went to a an Aircrew Reception Centre at at Edgbaston in Birmingham on a three day course, and I was then deferred you know. I I passed as a wireless operator gunner you know for that for that category and I finished up as a gunner. And er I was, I joined up on the 17th January 1944, and I was a year training I went to, I started off at in Lord’s Cricket Ground that’s where I joined up.
GR: Right.
MK: And I went from there to Bridgnorth in Shropshire and that was you know sort of what do you call it square bashing and messing about you know general things. And I moved from there to Walney Island that’s at at Barrow in Furness.
GR: Yes.
MK: And I did an air gunnery course there. From there I went to Silverstone, I went on Wellingtons at Silverstone and that’s where we was crewed up.
GR: That’s yeah, so that would have been five of you on the Wellington wouldn’t it?
MK: Yeah, yeah. There was, no six.
GR: Six was there?
MK: There was two gunners.
GR: Two gunners?
MK: Although there weren’t a mid-upper gunner, there was two gunners ‘cos we was we was getting prepared for Lancasters really, well we was and I was there at, for I don’t a few months, and we was moved out to a new satellite aerodrome just up the road from Silverstone.
GR: You know when you actually joined up was it to be an air gunner or did you have any aspirations of?
MK: Well, when I was I volunteered for aircrew.
GR: Yeah.
MK: That’s what you could do and it it comes down to education.
GR: Right.
MK: My education wasn’t pilot navigator class so I was drafted in to wireless operator/air gunner and I finished up being put in the air gunner category, and you know we did these, it was three days at this test in Birmingham and they after you been and done all the courses they channelled you into what they wanted you to be and I was to an air gunner. And then we was told we wouldn’t be called up until we were eighteen and a half which I was eighteen and a half on the 16th January, and I was called up on the 17th. And then progressed through there and by the time I got passed out it was early ’45 when I got on squadron.
GR: Right. Did you end up going to Heavy Conversion Unit?
MK: Oh yes.
GR: Yes. Was it Lancaster Finishing School?
MK: Well the first, the first Heavy Conversion Unit I went to was at Stradishall and it was on Stirlings, now that was a bloody education never you mind. And it was the middle of us gunners privilege to wind the undercarriage up and down there’d no hydraulic, it was, it was a marathon of job.
GR: Right, well that’s something I didn’t know, so you had to wind up.
MK: Yes I did. [turning pages of book].
GR: We are just looking at the log book.
MK: And that’s Silverstone, it was just after that.
GR: Yes.
MK: Twelve and a half hours I was on Stirlings, there we are that’s what I did on Stirlings, and then we was moved from there to North Luffenham on Lancasters.
GR: Yes, so that was 1653 Conversion Unit?
MK: Yes that was the conversion Heavy Conversion Unit and then I went to North Luffenham.
GR: Yes.
MK: And that’s where I converted onto Lancasters.
GR: And that was a better aircraft?
MK: Oh Christ, the Stirling was, it really it was I mean I was well eighteen, eighteen near enough nineteen, and it was it was bloody horses work winding that undercarriage, and if you look at that they were all circuits and landings.
GR: Yes.
MK: You did a circuit, wind the undercarriage up, round you went, flew, wound the bugger down and by the time you’d done a couple of hours of that you was knackered, absolutely knackered.
GR: And presumably that was when they were using Stirlings ‘cos it had been taken out of frontline operations in 1943.
MK: It was a stepping stone that’s all it was, and I mean when we got on the Lancs well of course that was automatic, because that was hard word.
GR: [laughs] So I’m looking at the log book and I would say most of well yeah January and a bit of February you were at Lancaster Finishing School?
MK: Yes, that’s 115 Squadron.
GR: Then off to Witchford
MK: Yeah.
GR: Which is 115 Squadron and I think the first flight you took there was on the 21st February ‘45. How did you feel, I mean obviously at the time you probably knew war was coming to a close obviously we’d invaded Europe and we’re pushing up into Germany so was it a case of you wanted to get on to operations before the war finished or was it the other way?
MK: Yes you were keen to get on operations but what I’ve got to say in all fairness the twelve ops I did I was in nowhere near the danger the blokes had been in earlier.
GR: Yeah, yeah.
MK: I mean I saw aircraft shot down, one of the photos which was I shall always remember seeing a Lancaster going down in flames and you could see the silhouette of the aircraft down in the flames you know that was at Potsdam.
GR: Was that daylight or?
MK: No no.
GR: Night time.
MK: No night time.
GR: Night time.
MK: Somewhere, here we are Potsdam, that one. That was a gentle reminder we was taking to the Nazis that the war was about over we were just it was a bit of a persuader that was the last one thousand bomber raid of the war.
GR: Right, that was on the 14th April 1945.
MK: We was led to believe that it was the last thousand bomber raid.
GR: Last thousand altogether yeah. I was just going to say were all your operations at night but?
MK: No, no.
GR: Heligoland was a daylight wasn’t it?
MK: The three red ones were at night, twice to Kiel and once to Potsdam I think it was, and the rest was daytime. I was in 3 Group and 3 Group specialised on daytime bombing mainly, 5 Group round in the Lincoln area they was the main night time.
GR: What was the first operation like obviously?
MK: Well, I can’t really remember like, I can remember going on and flying and sort of been bloody pleased when I got back home again. But, I was never, I never used me guns in action, I never had occasion to to use ‘em.
GR: Yeah, and I would think I mean obviously towards the end of the war the Luftwaffe whether it was a night time or day time were pretty thin.
MK: We was getting on top.
GR: Yes you were getting on top but the flak.
MK: Yeah.
GR: And certainly around looking at Kiel.
MK: Oh aye.
GR: They were still going strong.
MK: We we we got hit with flak you know, not enough to damage, but we did get flak damage.
GR: Yeah.
MK: Yeah.
GR: Yeah so not excited about being on operations and not afraid but probably something?
MK: Well you was, you was shall we put it like this you was all in it together, I mean I wouldn’t going to do a bombing raid on my own all the aircrew on the squadron were going want they, so you was just one of a band it’s like a gang going to a football match.
GR: Yeah.
MK: You know, you don’t look at the dangers you can’t look at the danger.
GR: No no no. So er more training although by into May ’45. So where was you when the war finished?
MK: Witchford.
GR: You was at Witchford. Was you on ops or?
MK: Oh aye. VE night we walked down into Ely it was about two and a half miles into Ely. We walked down and had a night out on the on the beer and stuff in in Ely, and you know that was I actually remember it was everybody we was, there was a pub we used to visit in Ely we got down there and it was full we couldn’t get in but it didn’t matter because the people was handing us beers through the window.
GR: Yeah. Obviously in uniform?
MK: Oh yeah, oh Christ aye.
GR: How did it feel you know you’d done nearly a year’s training?
MK: Yeah.
GR: And flown on operations for a month two month.
MK: Yeah that’s right. Yeah I mean I’ve got to say I was one of the lucky ones I wasn’t in when it was at its worst, but we was there and.
GR: Oh absolutely.
MK: If I’d been sent out to the Far East I could’ve still at been at it longer but you know ‘cos the war in the Far East carried on a bit longer.
GR: Was you approached to go on it was Tiger Force wasn’t it they got together to send out?
MK: Well, it was, it was you know, we was getting boss of ‘em like. I’ve a friend from New Leake he’s he was on Liberators on the Far East and he was still at it a little bit longer than me.
GR: So then I’m looking again at the beginning of May you took part in Operation Manna.
MK: Yeah.
GR: Which was supplying food.
MK: Food to The Hague.
GR: Yeah to the Dutch.
MK: Yeah.
GR: How did you feel about that it was a pleasure I presume?
MK: Well It was yeah. It was very interesting after the war we did such a lot of different things, we dropped supplies there, and then we we was flying troops home for leave from Italy and flying them back, I did that I can’t remember how many times seven or eight times, and we really enjoyed that. And then we did what they called Baedeker tours flying over the bomb damage of the of Germany and taking a few of.
GR: Taking a few of the ground crew round yeah yeah.
MK: So I went over the dams and things, and then we did a trip when the launch was of the Queen Queen Elizabeth, one of the big liners she was launched and we went out to fly to her and fly round her and back you know on an exercise that was good.
GR: ‘Cos there was a victory fly pass wasn’t there?
MK: Yeah I wasn’t on that.
GR: You wasn’t on that one yeah.
MK: [unclear] It was after that.
GR: So all the training went into a lot of logs. I know obviously Operation Manna there was four or five food drops.
MK: I did a lot of flying after the war it was till I was demobbed like you know then. There was a dodge [?] to Naples that was a trip, that was the trip when we lost the pilot’s luggage.
GR: Go on then tell us a little bit about that?
MK: Aye?
GR: Go on tell us a little bit about that?
MK: I’ve told you about it it’s that what was on the bottom there.
GR: Go on just repeat it again that was the pilot releasing the bomb bay doors by mistake.
MK: Yeah, we’d been airborne probably half an hour and he required the toilet, so he stood up from his pilot’s seat and as he was standing up his intercom cable caught the bomb door lever and opened the bomb doors, out went all the kit, and when we got to Naples I’d the privilege of telling the blokes that all the luggage is lost and that was a bit of a hairy few minutes.
GR: How many servicemen was there, how many servicemen did you get into the Lancaster?
MK: I would say about I would say about twelve or fifteen they just sat on the bomb bay top, on top of the bomb bay.
GR: ‘Cos it wasn’t the most –
MK: Oh no.
GR: It was a cramped aircraft?
MK: Well, no they’d.
GR: All right for a crew of seven?
MK: But they had they had room but they were just sat on the bomb bay they had no no comforts.
GR: Oh.
MK: Well it well it wasn’t you know.
GR: And when you were bringing the prisoners back?
MK: Yeah they was the same.
GR: The same thing they just sat.
MK: Yeah, yeah they just sat on the bomb bay. Whether you’ve been in a Lancaster?
GR: Yeah.
MK: You know where the rear gunner’s, there’s the bomb bay like here, and then there’s a big drop down in’t there.
GR: Yes.
MK: And they were sat from there to where the navigator and wireless operator sat, on on top there was a big flat area there, quite comfortable, room for well I would say you could have sat twenty on but I don’t think we brought quite as many as that, I can’t really be sure of the number.
GR: No no.
MK: No not to be honest I’ve an idea I would have said twelve or fourteen but I would stand corrected on that.
GR: So you lost all the servicemen’s kit?
MK: Yeah, we lost all their, all their personal kit yeah.
GR: When was you demobbed?
MK: Demobbed well I can’t remember.
GR: ’46?
MK: Yeah it was.
GR: Yeah.
MK: I can’t remember looking in here.
GR: Yeah. Was you given a chance to stay in or?
MK: Well there was, I I couldn’t get out quick enough, but by the time I’d come out I I realised I didn’t ought to have done. I’d have stopped in because there was an opportunity to re retrain and I would have liked to have stopped in and trained as a better tradesman gunnery for you know what I mean, but I didn’t do I come out. [unclear] ’44.
GR: It’s 1947 isn’t it, yeah 24th June 1947. I know some chaps who came out who were demobbed but then went back in again a couple of years later. What did you do after the war then?
MK: I was lorry driving.
GR: Lorry driving yeah.
MK: I was lorry driving for I don’t know about ten or eleven year and I finished up being transport manager for a company till I retired.
GR: Yeah. But you enjoyed your time in the RAF?
MK: Oh I did, oh I enjoyed it, I wouldn’t have missed it, no.
GR: Well that’s excellent, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Maurice Kemp
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-25
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AKempM160425
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:25 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Barrow-in-Furness
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
Germany
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Kiel
Italy
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Before joining the Royal Air Force in January 1944, Maurice helped to build Coningsby aerodrome. After attending an Aircrew Reception Centre at Edgbaston, he passed as a wireless operator gunner, finishing as a gunner. He joined up at Lord’s cricket ground, went to RAF Bridgnorth, followed by an air gunnery course at RAF Walney Island. Maurice crewed up at RAF Silverstone on Wellingtons where the crew had two gunners. He went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall on Stirlings. RAF North Luffenham followed and a Lancaster Finishing School as part of 115 Squadron. Maurice finished at RAF Witchford.
Maurice carried out 12 operations but never used his guns in action. Most of the operations were in daylight although he flew night-time operations to Kiel and Potsdam. He then took part in Operation Manna and flew troops to and from Italy. Maurice also participated in tours for ground crew to witness the damage in Germany.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
115 Squadron
1653 HCU
air gunner
aircrew
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Coningsby
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stradishall
RAF Walney Island
RAF Witchford
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/8884/PNeechPRR1601.2.jpg
b18dcb33ac05d88b974e6778658b17de
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/615/8884/ANeechPRR161013.2.mp3
b4f50aafc08ff7c8b4aba0c7ac356bbc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Neech, Peter Rowland Ruthven
P R R Neech
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Neech, PRR
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Peter Neech (b.1925, 1851518 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a with 75 and 98 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: My name is Judy Hodgson and I’m interviewing Peter Neech today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s digital archive. We’re at Mr Neech’s home and it is the 13th of October 2016. Thank you, Peter for agreeing to talk to me today. Peter can you tell me when and where you were born?
PN: Yes, I was born in London, West Hampstead actually on the 7th of January 1925. And that’s quite a long time ago. [laughs]
JH: That’s right. And what about your family and your early years sort of thing?
PN: Yes, well I had a mother and father there you see. My father was in the first world war and he was trained as a marine engineer and then like all young fellows he decided that he would far rather be a dispatch rider and got on a motor bike. He was flying about the trenches, all over that kind of thing. That was his - although he was trained as a marine engineer he did – he’d rather would do the motor bike bit. So that’s what he did and he came through the war alright. Yes, he did alright. Now –
JH: Where?
PN: Going forward to my years, I suppose if I were to – I think about 1940. I was working in a jeweller’s shop in Hammersmith. And the manager’s son came in one day and he said ‘Oh,’ he said ‘I’ve done it now’ he said ‘I’ve really gone and done it. I’ve joined the Air Training Corps’ or the Air Defence Cadet Corps as it was then. He said ‘I’m really in it’. I heard that and thought I’m going to join that too. So, I promptly looked around near home and I joined the Air Training Corps as it was then as well. And I served in that for two or three years until 1943. And on my birthday in 1943, 7th of January, I went along and I joined the air force. I was eighteen and I joined the air force then. And I was called up some six or seven months later. And did my training in various places, ITW, Initial Training Wings and then finally –
JH: Where was that, Initial Training Wing, where was that?
PN: Initial Training, believe it or not it was at St John’s Wood. It wasn’t the Initial Training Wing there it was, oh what was the name of the place? It was in St John’s Wood in the various flats that were there, luxurious flats that were there. And they took great precautions to see they didn’t get mucked up. At a reception centre, aircrew reception centre, that’s what it was called. And we were there for two or three weeks something like that, got uniform and things of that sort. And then we were moved then to a reception centre, where was it called? Oh, I think it was at – well we went onto various places like beginning to train, oh yes at Bridgnorth down in Shropshire. And there we started, started, although we didn’t fly down there we did do some training, aircrew training down there. And that was three or four weeks down there. It was rather, it was rather strange. We didn’t have sheets to sleep in we just had blankets and I got well and truly bitten by little buggy wugs. And had to go, I went to sick quarters to get treated for this. And he made sure that I was lathered in a thick coating of sulphur ointment and uniform on top of that. Most uncomfortable. [emphatic] I was straight out of there went home, I was not too far from home, went home, took, changed my uniform for my best uniform and the rest went in the laundry. And there they stayed until they got cleared of all the sulphur, sulphur ointment. I never went back near them again. [laughs] And from Bridgnorth I then went on a very long train journey, Bridgnorth down in Shropshire, right up to just outside of Inverness. Which was a long time. And that was at, the place was called Dalcross. And it was an Initial Gunnery School. And it took us quite – it was a troop train and as such we didn’t get changed – we didn’t change trains at all. We stayed on that one train and I thought ‘Right monkey, I’ll get some sleep on here’. And I made sure I got up into the luggage rack and had a good old sleep for most of the time. [laughs] Anyway, we arrived at Dalcross railway station and there the, there was a corporal there to shepherd us up into the local station, RAF station at Dalcross. No er, all just any kind of marching, no smartness at all there, just a shambles going into that station. But that was alright. Some six weeks later we were marched down there very much in line and very much drilled, having been taught how to drill properly. And indeed, how to deal with guns. And it was very nice we passed out there as sergeants. And the local WAAF’s on the station were very kind they sewed, carefully sewed, our stripes and our brevets on our uniforms. That was very kind, we would have made a right old mess of it. But they did it and they did it kindly for us. And that corporal who had marched us carefully up to the station, we marched him round the parade ground. He was a corporal, we were sergeants and we chased him round the parade ground at a very good march. And then we marched him down to the railway station too when we went away. And so we went back to our next station which was in, er not Andover, not very far from London in fact I went to London. I was able to go home for a day or so because we were going there. And going back I went from Bakers Street to this station where this – it was, what was it? An ITW, no not ITW. Was a training station anyway onto Wellington aircraft. And it wasn’t a very long railway journey and I met a very good friend on that journey, Pat Butler. And he – I’ve got a picture of him there somewhere. He was a very good – we got on great friends, we became great friends. He went onto the same squadron as me. We went onto the Initial Training Wings and various training wings and we went onto the same squadron together. And the third trip that we did was laying sea mines in Kiel Canal. And we got a bit damaged and had to retire. We got one engine shot out and this engine was the one that supplied power to the gun turrets. We turned – we dropped our mines, laid our mines, but we then moved away and went back home.
JH: What aeroplanes were you flying?
PN: There we were flying Stirlings.
JH: Right.
PN: Yes, we were flying Stirlings there and we went back, back to our station at Westcott. Westcott, that’s what it was called. Anyway, Pat Butler I’m afraid he, a fighter ‘plane caught them and shot them down and they were all killed. Great pity only a third operation. Um, so I was very sad to see that. Quite funny we were in the same barrack block. In the same Nissen hut it was actually together. He was in one corner. And they had a firm called, air force people, called the Committee of Adjustments, yeah. And these, this Committee of Adjustments whenever anyone was shot down or killed or anything like that they used to come round and collect up all their kit and put it into stores. They collected up his kit and mine too! And it took me several days to get my uniforms back again because I was sleeping in the corner near enough to his bed, so they collected up his stuff and mine too. [laughs] Well, I was very cross with them for that but anyway I got the stuff back eventually. And from there we went onto Stradishall. Yes, now come to think of it the aircraft that we had been flying in until then were Wellington aircraft, and not Stirlings. Was about to say we weren’t on Stirlings until we went to Stradishall. When we went to Stradishall that was when we went onto the Stirlings, the heavy bombers, four engined. And that was the time when I’d got somewhere to go, I got a mid-upper gun turret and that was alright. On the Wellingtons of course there was no mid-upper gun turret.
JH: So what position were you on a Wellington?
PN: Pardon?
JH: Where did you fit into a Wellington?
PN: In the middle of the fuselage. Nowhere much to go except to look out of the bits, the astra dome, things like that, just to keep myself amused. But there we are, as I say we went onto eventually onto the squadrons and they were flying Stirlings then and it was on Stirlings that Pat Butler got killed. It was a shame, only on his third operation. I went onto do – I did a complete tour there and somehow or another they managed to – a tour of operations was thirty operations. Somehow or another they managed to craftily get me on and I did thirty-one. I don’t know I managed, they managed to do that but they did. And they asked me, we’d just come back from a bombing raid and while I was coming away from the aircraft they asked me if I’d like to continue on that same squadron. And after I’d done an eight hour bombing mission I told them where to – what I thought of them. And I did, I got posted away. [chuckles] So I went to another place then and then I went onto North American Mitchells which was a twin engined bomber. There I think that’ll keep you busy for a while, I’ll give you some more a little later on. Yes, that’s how we did it and it was on those five that we were doing on the Stirlings, the third one was when Pat Butler was shot down and he, and all his crew, were killed. And that was a shame.
JH: And after those five you went on?
PN: And after those five I went onto Lancasters and we did converting onto Lancasters at Feltwell and did it all in one day. Day and night the conversion onto the Lancasters. Then we came back and we carried on our tour. But I’d done about five or six on the Lancasters when we were flying along one evening when an aircraft flying fairly close to us just blew up. He just blew up without any warning at all and rocketed us all over the sky. We went up topsy-turvy all over the sky. And eventually my skipper, he was a very good skipper, managed to put it into a bit of a dive. And from that dive he could pull us out. And he pulled us out at ten thousand feet. So, we had lost ten thousand feet and he pulled us out and climbed back up to the twenty thousand which was our normal operating height. And then we went on and did our, that particular bombing mission. Yes, I don’t know –
JH: Did you ever know who, which ‘plane it was that blew up? Did you ever know who they were?
PN: No I didn’t, no.
JH: No. Or why?
PN: No, well I suppose they got hit by anti-aircraft fire. And probably if it hit the bomb, bomb loads, it would blow up.
JH: Yes.
PN: Yeah, yes, it was er – it really sent us all over the sky. But as I say my skipper was a very good skipper and he eventually put it into a low dive and from that dive he could pull us out. He could work it out, and we then climbed back up to our normal height again, operating height again. But after that I went to – when we’d landed, a day or two later I thought ‘I must have some wax in my ears I think, I’ll go and get them syringed out at the medical centre.’ I hadn’t got wax in my ears, no. I’d got cracked eardrums. And the doctor – I went just to get the wax out of them. But he said ‘Oh you’ve got cracked eardrums.’ And I spent two weeks or more in hospital, Ely Hospital, and then some time in a local health centre not very far from Ely Hospital. I can’t remember their name now but it was an old English country house sort of thing. Used – it had been taken over by the RAF and people we used to recover from various injuries there. And I was there for two or three weeks and then went back. But of course my crew carried on their time and at the end of that tour they carried on and they’d finished their tour some five odd trips before me. And I had to finish my tour with one or two other people, other skippers. And that was a bit of a nuisance. Because my crew, my original crew, then went on to rest period and I had to carry on flying. That’s, I suppose that’s how I got my, how I did the thirty-one operations instead of the thirty because of a bit of a mix up on the number.
JH: And then you had leave after?
PN: Then I had some leave yes.
JH: What did you do?
PN: I didn’t have much leave. About two or three weeks or something like that. End of tour leave. And then I went back again and eventually, oh I did instructing for a while. I went up funnily enough back up to Dalcross as a flying instructor. And you usually did six months as a flying instructor. I made sure that I counted the – I went there at the end of a particular month and I counted that whole month. And I, and there’s the beginning of another month just after Christmas. I counted that as a whole month so in fact I did four months rest period but it counted as six. And then I went back on flying again and I went back onto 98 Squadron which was a North American Mitchell squadron.
JH: Where was that based?
PN: They were based initially in Norfolk and then we went across to France, just outside of Brussels and then up into Germany. Up to a station in Germany near Osnabruck, there, Osnabruck, near Osnabruck. And it was then soon after that that the war terminated.
JH: So, did you fly with any of your, you know, former mates from the other crews, did you fly with them again?
PN: No, I didn’t see – but on the North American Mitchells I did a further seventeen bombing missions. So that made a total around about forty, forty-eight bombing missions I did altogether. Which was quite a lot. And on one of them going to a place called Bremen we were quite near a flak explosion, quite near to us. And when we got back I hadn’t, fortunately hadn’t used my guns on that particular operation. When we got back the armourer came up to me and he said ‘Would you like to keep this souvenir?’ and it was one of the cases, one of the round cases which was fed up by a belt quite near to me and it had got a nice little hole in it. And he said ‘We’ve taken the explosives out,’ he said ‘You’re lucky it didn’t explode’ because the metal, the flak that hit it was white hot and melted. He showed me the piece of flak and it had brass on one side melted onto it and the iron of the flak shell on the other side. And so it had melted that case, that brass case of the ammunition onto the flak and there – so it must have been very, very hot indeed. I was lucky it came to me as near to me, and I was lucky I didn’t get a little bit closer to that I’m glad to say. And the, as I say the armourer came to me later and said ‘Would you like this case?’ with the flak inside it. It was a big hole, I’ve got it still and he gave it to me. Unfortunately, a number of years later my, one of my sons looked at that shell case and the little bit of flak which was inside it rattled and he thought ‘That’s all very interesting’ and the little bit of metal, the flak, he looked at that and then put it in the ashtray and it got thrown out. I didn’t know for a month or so later that it had been thrown out. And it is a real piece of the interest story of that but it’s a pity, but it was gone. I searched for it but I couldn’t find it. Well, lost that. I’ve got the case, the shell case still but I’ve lost the piece of flak that would fill it which was a shame.
JH: Of all the aircraft that you actually flew in did you have a preference for any of the aircraft that you were in?
PN: Did I?
JH: Did you prefer one aircraft to another, did you like?
PN: Oh well I would have preferred the Lancaster.
JH: Ah.
PN: Yes, the Lancaster. The Stirling was quite good. It was bigger in fact I think, bit bigger than the Lancaster and we had some quite interesting do’s in them I must agree. Mainly going to Kiel and places like that. And we went down one time to where was it? Went to the South of France on a bombing mission laying sea mines. Yes, I’d have to look in my logbook and see where we went to on those places.
JH: You had some –
PN: Coming back from that place, La Rochelle, La Rochelle. It was a tributary of a river there and we laid our sea mines in there and we came back, and we by a little bit of a mistake I must agree, we came a little bit close to the point of Brest. The part of France Brest. And it was in German hands and they opened up all kinds of fire against us so we promptly put our guns over the side and fired back at them. They shut up quick. They shut – the firing immediately stopped and we went a little bit further out to sea. And came back home that way. But they, it’s funny to see that they fired several shots at us, going out as we came past Brest, and the moment we started firing back at them they packed up at once, and went quiet, very quiet.
JH: You must have had quite, quite a few near misses?
PN: Um [emphatic] yes.
JH: Yes.
PN: Oh yes.
JH: Do you remember any others in particular, do you remember?
PN: Now did I? Yes. One of the last ones. Well of course, I told you about that one. He was going, a friend of mine who wrote the poetry he was going to a place called Darmstadt. And that was fairly near to where I was going at – it’s in my logbook too – down by the South, the South of France. I’ll look it up in my logbook soon and tell you what it was. And we got quite a bit of a hammering there too. Um, I forget the – of course it’s seventy odd years ago you see, it is a long time to remember these things. I will look it up, I’ll tell you later on.
JH: So really it must have been quite difficult?
PN: Yes.
JH: Having to go back up all the time?
PN: Yes, it was but I didn’t particularly bother about it, it was part of the job that I was doing. But we did have fighters come after us a number of times and we used to employ an evasion method called a corkscrew. And a corkscrew, we used to fly into the direction of the fighter and lose about a thousand foot. And then we’d roll over to the other side and drop another thousand foot. And then we’d climb a thousand foot, and roll and climb another thousand foot. And by that time that fighter was long gone. So, our corkscrew did us the world of good. So, we didn’t have to bother too much with corkscrews a lot. That was our normal tactic for getting out of fighter, fighter attacks.
JH: Could all ‘planes do that are was it only?
PN: Oh yes.
JH: All of them, it was standard?
PN: It was a known tactic. It was a known tactic that aircraft could go into a corkscrew, yeah.
JH: What is your experience really of being in the mid-upper turret, you know what was that like to be in that particular position?
PN: Yes, it was quite cold. It was – we used to go there and the outside – there was only a thin – the turret had perspex, a perspex cupola and that was only very thin that perspex. And outside was a temperature of minus forty, something like that, it was quite cold. But we went – while I was doing normal, not an evasion tactic, but we did what we called dinghy drill. Learning how to get into a dinghy quickly if we were shot down over the sea. And to do that we went to a local swimming pool at Newmarket. And while there you dressed up in flying clothing, very – most likely it was flying clothing that the, a crew had used a few minutes ago, and it was soaking wet and cold. But I’d noted that the helmet was one of the old type helmets with the zip earpieces, and it was my head that used to get cold with the thin helmets, flying helmets that we normally had. So, a little case of swapping went on there. And I came away with a heavier, heavier helmet, which I promptly cleaned up and laundered and the – ‘cause it was quite dirty inside really. But I laundered it and polished the brass and I had to resew some of the straps on, the hooks on because they were in the wrong position for my oxygen mask and things like that. But I did all that and very snug and very comfortable helmet I got out of it. And you could, if you could see me on a dark night you’d see a smile on my face that all the cold outside I was nice and warm in that helmet. I’ve still got that helmet, yes. So, I had done some thirty-one operations on the Stirlings and Lancasters. And then another sixteen or seventeen on North American Mitchells. And that made quite a total. About forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-eight operations. Quite a lot. Quite good fun, quite good fun.
JH: And how did you feel about being in the war, was it?
PN: Well it was – I lived in London of course you see. I lived in London until 1943 when I joined the air force. And we were often very well bombed. In fact, I remember when I came home, when I first passed out as a sergeant air gunner, that I came, got a taxi because I’d got quite hefty kit bags. I thought ‘I can’t get on buses and things with those’ so I got a taxi home. And he stopped at one place and I waited for a minute, ‘What have you stopped here for?’ he said ‘Well this is where you wanted to be isn’t it?’ And I looked out and it was. My house a bit dented, a bit well and truly dented. Had bombs near it and had got quite well damaged. But my people, my father and mother, they were all right. Of course, they’d been a bit shaken up by all that but they survived it all right. And I saw that things were all right. And that’s when I went back onto flying operations again.
JH: Did you hear a lot about Bomber Harris you know?
PN: Oh yes, he was a –
JH: Yes.
PN: Yes, Butch, we called him Butch. Butch Harris, yeah. Yes, we thought he was a great man, a very good man. He was well appreciated and his trips that he put us on.
JH: Would he visit your base, your squadrons at all or?
PN: I never saw him no.
JH: You didn’t see him?
PN: I didn’t see him. We did get some people you know quite high up, high up ranks come and visit the station at times but they never came to see us as well. They, would often talk to people up in the front like the pilot and navigators but they never came down towards the tail end. Never talked to the mere gunners oh no. [laughs] Probably wasn’t designed, they probably didn’t think about it. But I couldn’t care, I wouldn’t bother really about that. So, there it is. And as I say I came out in 1946 something like that and a friend that I’d had at home for a long, long time we had decided that when the war was over we would start up a small restaurant, that kind of business. And so, I came out and I worked in hotels for quite a while, for several years. A particular one was Grosvenor House in Park Lane. Yes, I worked in the kitchens there. And then I got a little bit tired. Well you worked from early morning, you had a break in the afternoon, and then you worked at night again until about two or three in the morning. And eventually after doing that for about three or four years I got tired of that, I went back into the air force. And though I went back as a sergeant air gunner and a gunnery instructor so I was quite happy about that. And I spent several more years in the air force then.
JH: Where were you based then in the air force?
PN: Then, where was I? I can’t remember the places. Well, we went into – I forget the name but we did some flying for – I was a gunnery instructor there, we did gunnery instructing. I think up in Scotland somewhere. I think we did some training, you know training gunners up there, who were being trained as gunners. And eventually I came down, eventually I came out of the air force and settled down.
JH: What ‘planes were you flying then, when you were training then up there?
PN: Ah yes, I was flying Shackletons, Shackletons. When I started with them you know they had two forward wheels and the tail was down on the floor. But afterwards a little later on they became tri-planes and they had all three wheels at the front and they were flying on the three wheels you know, they landed on the three wheels, much better aircraft. Shackelton III and we did quite a bit of gunnery training on the Shackletons and they were quite nice. Yes, well that’s taken you over a whole few years.
JH: It has.
PN: 1950’s.
JH: Yes, and did you actually keep in touch with any of the crew after the war?
PN: No.
JH: No?
PN: No, never saw them again.
JH: Didn’t see them?
PN: Of course, they went back to New Zealand see.
JH: Of course.
PN: Mind, later on I did meet up with my skipper’s daughter. In fact I’ve got some pictures of her there. She was a nice girl and she came and stayed with us one time. And I’ve got a picture, several pictures of her there in my casings there. You can have a look at them some time when you’re ready.
JH: What did your skipper do then after the war, she obviously told you?
PN: Oh, I don’t know.
JH: She didn’t say?
PN: Don’t know what he did.
JH: No?
PN: But not very long afterwards unfortunately his wife died.
JH: Right.
PN: And later, little later on he died as well. In fact, I’m the only one of the crew now alive.
JH: Right.
PN: All – they were as I say, when I joined them they were all in their thirties. So, they were about fifteen years older than me so they therefore of course they didn’t last so long. Now I’ve got a picture here. A book here – my logbook, my flying logbook. And there’s even – when we were flying in Germany we did a flypast for the Russian leader [rustling] a General Zhukov, and there’s a picture of General Zhukov. [rustling]
JH: September 1945.
PN: Yes.
JH: So that was at the surrender?
PN: Yes, yes we did a flypast for him. That was in the North American Mitchells I think. [rustling]
JH: I’d like to thank you Peter for allowing me to record this interview today, so thank you very much.
PN: That’s OK, my pleasure.
JH: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Rowland Ruthven Neech
Creator
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Judy Hodgson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ANeechPRR161013
PNeechPRR1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:44:34 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
Temporal Coverage
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1943
Description
An account of the resource
Peter was born in London and his home suffered bomb damage during the war. He served in the Air Training Corps until joining the Royal Air Force in 1943. After reporting to the Aircrew Reception Centre at St John’s Wood, he spent a few weeks at RAF Bridgnorth. Peter then went to the Air Gunnery School at RAF Dalcross. This was followed by RAF Westcott, a training station on Wellington aircraft. Peter flew in Stirling aircraft at RAF Stradishall where he had a mid-upper gun turret unlike in the Wellingtons. He worked as an instructor for four months at RAF Dalcross before joining 98 Squadron on North American Mitchells. He was initially based in Norfolk but then went near Brussels and Osnabrück.
Peter carried out a tour of 31 operations on Stirlings and Lancasters, followed by 17 operations on North American Mitchells.
Peter recounts a few incidents from his tours, describes the corkscrew evasion method and how he coped with the cold in the mid-upper turret. They held a positive view of Arthur Harris.
Although he left the RAF in 1946, Peter returned as a sergeant air gunner and gunnery instructor. He flew in Shackletons.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
75 Squadron
98 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-25
bombing
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
military service conditions
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Dalcross
RAF Stradishall
RAF Westcott
Shackleton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/785/9340/PTurnerHA1801.1.jpg
ee4d9c570a3678bd6343b3c5957fb700
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/785/9340/ATurnerHA180829.1.mp3
e8342d61f314b839367caf2cfbcc9535
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Turner, Bert
Herbert Alan Turner
H A Turner
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bert Turner (b. 1923, 1607412 Royal Air Force). He completed 31 bombing and supply operations as a flight engineer with 196 Squadron. He was shot down twice.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-08-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Turner, HA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: We’re now running. So, we just had Bert, thank you for giving your time up and also to Peter for giving his time up as well. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command. The interviewer is Martyn Hordern, that’s me. The interviewee is Herbert Turner. The interview is taking place at the Tri-Services and Veteran’s Support Centre, Hassell Street, Newcastle, Staffordshire. Also present is Peter Batkin, a friend of Bert. The date is the 29th of August 2018. So, we’ve obviously just, when we’ve asked you Peter, Bert sorry that your date of birth was the 23rd of December 1923. Where were you born?
BT: London.
MH: Whereabouts in London?
BT: 99 Ledbury Road, Paddington.
MH: Paddington.
BT: I think it’s Paddington. I wouldn’t be sure.
MH: No.
BT: It’s either Paddington or Kensington.
MH: What sort of family did you come from? A large family, a small family?
BT: Mum and dad and six kids.
MH: And where did you —
BT: I was the youngest but one.
MH: Right. I’m just opening my bottle of water of here so apologies for the fizz. Had your dad served in the First World War?
BT: Yes, he was in the RAF, in the RFC.
MH: Right.
BT: As it was then. I found a photograph the other night of my dad in his tropical kit for the Dardanelles.
MH: Right. So he’d served at Gallipoli.
BT: Hmmn?
MH: In Gallipoli. The Dardanelles. Wasn’t it Gallipoli, yeah?
BT: Ahum.
MH: James, dad was in Gallipoli as well.
BT: He, yeah, my dad and his three brothers fought in the First World War.
MH: So, what was life like growing up in the 1920s in London?
BT: We were alright. We probably, practically lived in Kensington Gardens and the parks and that. And they say, they say it was the hungry years. I didn’t know. I never went hungry. We always had something on the table. Mum was main cook and that was it. We, I went to school at St Stephens in Paddington. Did all my schooling there from the time I was three ‘til I was fourteen. Then I got a, I started work. I worked at Lyons in Cadby Hall, as an office lad. I didn’t like that. Went to McVities Biscuit factory and I finished up in the London Co -op as a delivery boy until I joined up.
MH: So —
BT: And that —
MH: At that point you were you were sort of like as I say a young teenager just before the war started.
BT: Yeah. Well, we in the Scouts and the Cubs and then I transferred to the ATC. 46F Squadron in Kensington. I’m trying to think. It must have been what? Nineteen 1940, 1939 I suppose, I joined the ATC. Of course, we went all through the blitz. But as, as I remember it all I ever wanted to do was fly. That was the be all and end all. I mean Ball and Mannock and all of those, they were my heroes and —
MH: And where did that come from. Do you know that?
BT: I’ve no idea because nobody [laugh] nobody else in the family wanted it but my my idea was I wanted to go straight in to the Air Force as a lad. A boy. And my mum wasn’t having that. Only rogues and vagabonds were served, went in the Services.
MH: What was your dad’s view having served in the First War?
BT: Dad never, dad never argued with mum. They were both short, small people. Mum was just under five foot and dad was just over five foot. About five foot two. But only slight people. Very. But I can’t remember them falling out. They never fell out in front of us.
MH: No.
BT: I’m not saying they didn’t fall out but —
MH: So so you mentioned —
BT: A pretty, a pretty average sort of life.
MH: Yeah.
BT: It was a family and that was it.
MH: How did, how did the Blitz affect you because obviously you were in London and it’s 1940?
BT: Not a, not a lot. We used to go, we used to go out fire watching at the shop in Barlby Road. We were, we used to go messaging with the ARP and that sort of thing. But it never seemed to, I know it sounds ridiculous but it didn’t seem to affect life.
MH: No.
BT: It, life went on.
MH: Yeah. But you could see the after affects I assume of the raids.
BT: You’d get up in the morning and there had been a bomb here or a bomb there sort of thing and you saw different things I mean, like toilets hanging on a wall and that sort of thing. It seemed remarkable. But my, my life just seemed to carry on sort of thing until I was seventeen and a half and then I went to Acton and volunteered. And mother wasn’t very pleased about that. ‘You’ll go quick enough but —’ she said, ‘They’ll send for you quick enough.’
MH: Yeah.
BT: I said, ‘Yes, but I want to go in the Air Force, mum.’ So, that was it.
MH: Did she have to sign you in at that age or were you old enough to sign yourself?
BT: No. I signed myself in [pause] and mother didn’t speak to me for ages. She didn’t, didn’t want to know. We’d already got, I’d already got two brothers in. One in the Air Force and one in the Army and mum said that was enough. But I said, ‘It’s got to come mum. I’ve got to go.’ So that was it.
MH: And the truth be told you wanted to go though.
BT: I wanted to go. Yes. Oh yes, I was. I thought it was going to be all over before I had my chance. But I went to Acton and volunteered and I had to go to Oxford for three days for, you know I don’t know what they called it, an interview with, and exams. And they told me I could go in as a flight mech and [pause] I could study to be a pilot if I wanted. Fair enough. And they called me up on August the 2nd 1942. I went to, from [pause] went to Penarth for seven days where they kitted us out. And from Penarth we went to Blackpool where I did my square bashing and, in civvy digs. We were there ‘til December I think it was and we marched out to Halton in December ’42.
MH: And that’s when you went to a, to a squadron then, did you?
BT: No. No. That was, that was training school.
MH: Right.
BT: I started my flight mech’s course and they put a notice up on orders. They wanted flight engineers. So we, a lot of us volunteered and we had to go down to London for our medicals and I was accepted. And about February we were posted to St Athans in Wales where we did our flight engineer’s course. And [pause] we had a funny experience there. We were all out on the, not the outside the hangars where the school was for a NAAFI break and all at once somebody says, about four or five hundred blokes stood around and all at once somebody shouted, ‘Jerry.’ And everybody drops to the ground and looked and three, three German aircraft flew across. The only thing was they were wearing RAF roundels [laughs] They were captured aircraft. But that was amusing. And then it was 1943, mother died while I was at St Athan and that was a blow. We [pause] we didn’t get over that. But I finished up, I passed out at St Athan. I think I got about sixty five, seventy percent. It was a pass anyhow through and I got my tapes and my brevet. We moved from St Athan to 1657 Con Unit at Stradishall, just outside Newmarket and while I was there I crewed up and met my crew, Mark Azouz, John Greenwell, Leo Hartman, John McQuiggan, Teddy Roper, Pete Findlay and myself. And we started flying Stirling 1s and we did our day circuits and bumps. Started night circuits and bumps. And we did a couple of circuits and bumps with the instructors on board and the skipper screened, turned around, he said, ‘I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘You take it around for one yourself and put it to bed.’ And my instructor said, ‘If he’s getting out I’m getting out. You’re on your own.’ [laughs] I thought fair enough. Off we went. Undercarriage up and away we went. Anyhow, skipper said, ‘Undercarriage down.’ And the undercarriage wouldn’t play.
MH: And this was the first time you’d flown solo as a crew.
BT: Yes. So well, we did all we could think of which I don’t suppose there was much. Told them downstairs that we were having trouble with the undercart. Anyhow, we eventually, we had to try to wind it down by hand. We got one leg down but we couldn’t get the other one. So, we got one leg down and that was tighter. They decided that we were going to have to land at Waterbeach. Then halfway to Waterbeach they decided the best thing was to land it on Newmarket Race Course. So, skipper put her down on Newmarket Race Course.
MH: And you got the one leg back up again.
BT: One leg up and one we, they managed, we managed to break the lock on the starboard, no, port, port leg and the skipper took her in and we landed and I think she was, she was a mess. And we all got out and climbed out and we were all standing on one of them rings and the ambulance driver came up and looked at us and he counted us and he turned around and, ‘What, nobody hurt?’ And we, nobody had a scratch so that was it. And then we were called in the flight office the next day and wingco was very annoyed. He told us we’d broken his aeroplane. That was, that was the end of that. Anyhow, we got away with it and we finished up we were posted to 90 Squadron at Tuddenham just before Christmas and we did, I don’t know, it was six or seven trips. We did a mine laying to Sylt, Kiel and that sort of thing and then at the time they were busy bombing the French factories for the Doodlebugs and that. And we did a couple of them. And then they posted us away to Tarrant Rushton to go glider towing and para dropping. We went [pause] we went to Tarrant Rushton, we were only there for oh, a couple of weeks, a couple of three weeks as I remember it. It doesn’t, doesn’t gel very easily but I don’t think we operated from there. We, we took over Keevil from the Americans in around about March ’44 and we were glider towing and doing supply drops in France for the SOE.
MH: What sort of stuff were you taking over to the SOE? Did you know what you were taking?
BT: No. No. It was all in canisters or baskets or anything. Occasionally we would have a couple of bods we’d take over. SAS people initially. A lot of them were Poles.
MH: Were there, was those trips quiet trips or —
BT: Sometimes, it was but we did [pause] D-Day came up and they decided that we’d got to, all aircrew had got to fly with sidearms so they issued us all with .38 pistols and you can imagine nineteen, twenty year old kids playing cowboys and Indians. But we woke up one morning and went out to an aircraft and they’d painted the white stripes for the invasion. That was, all came as such a surprise that nobody knew anything about it until it was done. But the mechs were standing on the wings painting these blooming white stripes with brooms. Then D-Day came up. We were ready to go on the 5th. But no. We were ready to go on the 4th and it was cancelled. And then they gave the order that we were going on the 5th and we took the paratroops over D-Day on the, we took off on the 5th you know.
MH: Yeah.
BT: Early morning to —
MH: What planes were you flying then?
BT: I beg —
MH: What planes were you flying then?
BT: Stirling 4s. Yeah. We took twenty paratroops over, dropped them off and that was it.
MH: What was that like that you were flying across then?
BT: Do you know, do you know Peter will tell you, I’ve said this so many times before. It was one of the quietest trips I remember.
MH: No flak. No —
BT: We, we saw barely anything. It, it surprised, it, it sounds ridiculous when you first say it but as far as I was, we were concerned it was one of the quietest of our trips.
MH: And the paratroopers. Do you remember what —
BT: The paratroops went in.
MH: What battalion were they from?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: Do you remember what battalion they were from or [pause] Do you remember what —
BT: No. No. No. No, we didn’t have a lot to do with them. Chatted to them and all this, that and the other, you know.
MH: British I assume.
BT: Yes. Yes. It, it was just another trip. And then we did a trip to France and a delivery for the SOE. Arms and whatever and we got there and when you went on these SOE things all you were looking for is five bonfires and we found it. And when we got there Jerry was waiting for us and it got nasty. First, we went in, dropped what we got, came out of it. There was a light flak gun busy after us but we got away with it and he never touched us and we flew in and checked for a hang up. Well, on a Stirling there’s a step and it’s across along the width of the bomb bay and the bomb bay on a Stirling is three different sections. That’s why it can’t take big bombs. And in this step there was three little glass windows only about the size of a tin. You know, a pea tin top and you held a torch against one end and someone looked at the other and if they could see the torch you hadn’t got, the light, you’d got no hang-ups. If they couldn’t you’d got a hang-up. And we had three hang-ups of containers.
MH: Just hadn’t been released from their old —
BT: They hadn’t dropped. So it was skipper turned around and said, ‘Well, they never touched us that time. We’ll take them back.’ Which thinking about it afterwards was a stupid idea but we didn’t think about that at the time and I said, ‘Well, somebody will have to give me a hand.’ I said, ‘Two of them I can drop myself but the other one’s the other end of the aircraft.’ So, ‘Well, McGuigan can drop the other one.’ So, fair enough. And when you drop them you just pull a bolt back and they drop. But they drop without a parachute. A parachute won’t open for some reason. I don’t know why. So anyhow, skipper goes and we go around and just as Leo said, ‘Drop them,’ dropped a, Jerry hit us and he put the starboard outer out of action, damaged the starboard inner and peppered us a bit. None of us were touched. Fair enough. We came out but the skipper shouted for me and I went up and he turned around and said, ‘The starboard outer won’t feather.’ I said, ‘Well, use the —’ [pause] he said, ‘The starboard’s running out.’ ‘Feather it.’ He said, ‘It won’t feather.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ So I said, ‘Get Pete out of his turret,’ because the torque on the prop on the starboard outer could possibly take the rear tail up. The fin and rudder. So we got Pete out of his turret and just as we got Pete out the props flew off somewhere over France and we flew back. We landed, landed at a place called Colerne just outside Bath. And they were, they were surprised to see us naturally so, but they were flying Mosquitoes and Spitfires. And I remember the CO there turned around and very unpolitely, turned round at the skipper and said, ‘I don’t know whether you’re a fool or a hero bringing this abortion in here.’ But anyhow the skipper got a DFC for it and we went back to Keevil.
MH: What, what was it like? You’ve had, you said your early flights were fairly sort of just dropping mines and that. I take it you’d never been really shot at had you in those first flights before you did your —
BT: Oh, we’d been shot at but not as badly if you know. It was just part of the —
MH: Yeah.
BT: Somehow or another it [pause] it didn’t seem to be a part of the equation that you got [pause] I don’t know why.
MH: And, and so and then you go to drop these supplies off and you go back round again.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And then you get hit.
BT: My point, thinking about it afterwards it was supposed to be a secret mission [laughs] Well, Jerry’s there shooting at you. These blokes have got to pick, down there have got to pick these containers up and they’re not light by any manner of means and disperse and get them off and Jerry’s on the doorstep. So all you’re doing really is handing it to Jerry.
MH: And what, what were your thoughts when the plane got hit?
BT: What can I do?
MH: Did you ever think you’d never get back?
BT: No. It never. Do you know, I can’t remember that at all. In any, I got, in any event I could never think of, it never entered my head that we were going to get hurt. Then after that it was we did a, there was an Operation Tonga as I remember it and it was a massive air drop to the south of France of containers for the French. Free French. That was, I think that was the only time that we flew then with other aircraft at daylight. Then I got married. I married a WAAF on the station. We got married on the Thursday. We had three days leave in London. We got, came, we went back and they shut the gates for Arnhem. And on the 17th of September we took a, took a Horsa to Arnhem and we went again on the Monday and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. The opposition we met was practically negligible. On the Tuesday we had apparently there was Air Ministry issued an order that all intelligence officers were to fly a mission. Well, my skipper was a Jew, as was the bomb aimer and the intelligence officer we had was a Jew so I suppose we would keep it in the family and he decided to come with us and of course they just gave him a helmet with a mic and a, earphones on. No, no oxygen mask or anything. And I used to go up second dickie when bomb aimer went down to the bomb aiming position but he’s sitting in my seat. So I’m halfway down the fuselage and in a Stirling that’s it. You can’t see anything. You’ve got to stick your head out the astrodome to look around sort of thing and flying along quite happily. Go to, got to the [unclear] where we turned in to the target and we were flying along quite happily and all at once, ‘There’s flak over there.’ [pause] ‘There’s flak.’ The skipper turned around. He said. ‘There’s flak where?’ He says, ‘Over there.’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘That’s port.’ He says, ‘And the other side’s starboard.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And it’s a long way away don’t worry about it.’ I thought to myself things are getting tricky. Jerry’s getting naughty. So I went down and stuck my head out the astrodome. Oh, well away in the distance is a few bursts of flak. We went in and we dropped our Horsa and went back home again. And then we went again on the Tuesday and Jerry got organised and it was rough. We had a rough and we were jocking through this lot the skipper turned around. He says, ‘Flak,’ he says, ‘I wish I’d got him with me now.’ He said, ‘I’d show him flak.’ We got away with it. They knocked us about a bit and we got a few holes in but we were fair enough and we, we got back and that was our thirtieth so we thought that’s it. No more. A rest. And on the Wednesday night they told us we’d got to do another one on Thursday. We’re short of crews. Fair enough. So on the Thursday morning we goes out to the aircraft and the skipper walks along and his scratching cats are missing and he’s got a bar on. What’s this? So, he anyhow, the skipper’s got his commission. Pilot officer. He got awarded a, promulgated with the DFC same day. So, we’re on for Arnhem, Thursday. Go out to the aircraft. Run it up. We couldn’t get revs and boost on. I think it was the outboard inner. One of them was playing up anyway. Doesn’t matter. Couldn’t get it to turn. ‘Take the spare aircraft.’ So you had to move everything that we were carrying to the spare aircraft and the rest of the lads had taken off so we were about twenty five, thirty minutes behind them taking off and skipper said to Leo, ‘Cut corners. Let’s get back with the lads and we can go over together.’ But we got there just as the lads were coming out and we had to go in on our own and it was rough. We got shot up a bit and it happened. And while we were over Arnhem this is a bit cheeky but still I went second dickie. McQuiggan, the wireless op went down the back because we were carrying baskets. Big baskets that had to go out and two Army dispatchers were flying with us and McQuiggan went down the back to supervise that.
MH: Were the dispatcher’s jobs to push the stuff off?
BT: Yeah.
MH: Was that their job?
BT: Yeah. Well, the Stirling had a big hatch at the bottom, in the, at the bottom of the fuselage near the tail where the paratroops dropped out and we used to have to push a, an A frame down and peg it in to stop the paratroop bags wrapping around the elevators. So McQuiggan’s down there doing that and we went through and as I say Jerry knocked us about a bit and we got through and McGuigan come up from the back and I went back to my own station and McGuigan come up and he, he’s covered in blood from head to foot. I looked and I thought where do you put a dressing? And I don’t know, ‘Where are you hit, Mac?’ He turned around and he said, ‘The elsan.’ I said, ‘The elsan?’ A shell must have burst under the aircraft, and the elsan, the chemical toilet is held down by three bolts and it had taken off and it had thrown it all over McQuiggan. And elsanal fluid is the same colour as Jeyes fluid and he’s —
MH: He’s not covered in blood.
BT: Anyhow, we got, we’re flying along and skipper asked Ginger for a course to Brussels. We’re flying on two engines. Well, we’re moving on two engines and I looked out the astrodome and I’ll never forget it. I looked up and there’s six fighters and I thought they were Tempests. And I wouldn’t mistake a 109 for a Tempest. A 190, yes. And I still say they were 190s. The Air Ministry said there were no 190s flying [unclear] Anyhow, they decided that we were going to be their meat and they, they came for us. Well, the rear gunner shot the lead aircraft down. The lead fighter blew up. I saw it with my own eyes. But then they got nasty and skipper gave the order to abandon aircraft and we baled out over a place called Niftrik and we, the Army picked us up. We got landed, four of us finished up in a farm house in Holland and, but they gave us egg and bacon. Then the Royal Horse Artillery picked us up, took us back to their camp, give us a night’s kip and put us in a lorry to go back to Belgium. And just as we were moving off, well we got to a crossroads somewhere or other and the Redcaps, Army Redcaps waiting there. ‘You’ve got to leave this and get out, sir.’ So we got out and we were lay in a ditch for I don’t know and in the finish we, we were walking across a field in Holland and the Americans picked us up and took us in to Veghel. And we got in to a Veghel, we spent the night there. And the next morning the Green Howards relieved that and the paras were coming out of Arnhem and I can’t think of the general, was it who was on the ground but he came out and there was a staff car waiting for him and he had, he went in the side car err in the staff car and before, there were five actually. Another crew bloke I don’t know he was now got in with us and we went in that to Brussels. We spent the night in Brussels and flew back to England the next day. We got in to England on the Sunday. The put us in a coach to take us to the Airworks in London and of course it was almost passing my home so I turned around to the driver and said, ‘You can drop me here. I’m going to see my dad.’ And, ‘You can’t.’ I said. ‘I’m going to.’ I said. So, I got out and I’m carrying a box like a wooden box, a tomato box with peaches and grapes from, and apples from Holland. And I got out the car at the, on the Western Avenue and I stopped a bloke in a car and he took me home [laughs] And I gave him a peach and oh he was quite happy. And I, we lived in quite a big house in London in Chesterton Road at the time and you had to go all round the house and in through the scullery door at the back and the dark passage from the scullery in to the kitchen. And just as I walked up the passage my dad come out of the kitchen and he took one look and passed out. And my brother was with him, he was on leave and he came out and he said, ‘What are you doing here? You’re dead.’ Thanks very much. They’d had telegrams, “Missing believed killed.” Because none of the boys had seen us. Seen us bale out.
MH: No.
BT: I had something to eat. My dad took me to Paddington Station. Well, my dad paid my fare back to Keevil. I never had that money off the Air Force either [laughs] And I’m standing on Paddington station, a sergeant. My trousers were ripped, I’d got no collar and tie, I was wearing a bit of orange supply chute around my neck, got no cap. I was wearing one flying boot and one flying boot that I’d cut down because I’d got an ankle wound and two MPs parading up and down in front of me and clearly they could see [laughs] And eventually they come across to me. ‘Sergeant, you’d best come with us.’ And they took me to the RTO and the RTO officer gave me a bed and they woke me up with a cup of cocoa. Put me on a train for Keevil and when I got back to Keevil of course I’d got no money. I got no money for the bus. One of the airman had to pay my fare. The bus driver wouldn’t let me on the bus without the fare. So, when the airmen paid my fare and I got back to Keevil and I thought well, I’d better go and see the wife, so —
MH: Bearing in mind you’d only been married a few days at that point.
BT: Yeah. I’d been married a week exactly when we were shot down and she’d been told that she was a widow. So anyhow, I walked in, up to the cookhouse and she come running out and the first thing she said to me was, ‘You stink.’ ‘Thanks very much.’ Anyhow, I finished up, I went up the billet and had a wash and had a shower and went to sick bay to get my ankle dressed. Hospital. So they put in the blood wagon and sent me over to Ely. And I’d hopped all over Holland, I’d hopped halfway across England, I got out the ambulance. I had to hop all over the hospital and they x-rayed it and all the rest and, yes. Fair enough. Nothing wrong. Dressed it and put it back and I went back to Keevil in sick bay. Well, my wife had to go in hospital for an operation about three days later so I turned around to the quack, I said, ‘Can I go in the blood wagon to see the wife at Ely?’ ‘You can’t,’ he said, ‘You’re, you’re a stretcher case.’ I thought thanks very much. So we, anyhow we finished up we stayed at, I was in dock for ten days I think and on the Saturday they let me out and I got, I was sent on survivor’s leave. And my wife came with me, and we had to travel from Keevil to Stoke on Trent. We got to Bristol and we had to change stations at Bristol. Anyhow, we got on the train and like all wartime trains it was packed and I’m standing there and the porter slung a case in and of course hit my ankle and didn’t know what it had done at the time of course. But I finished up the journey sitting on kit bags and God knows what. And when we got to my wife’s home my wife took the dressing off and had a look and it had knocked the scab of the wound. So, anyhow, I had my leave and went back and while we were on leave we, they’d moved from Keevil. I think they’d gone from Keevil to Shepherds Grove. And we got, when I got to Shepherds Grove we, I went and reported sick and I’m back in bed again. And anyhow it all went well in the finish and that was it.
MH: Could we just go back to when you got shot down and you parachuted out of a plane had you ever parachuted before? Had any training to parachute?
BT: Never had any training at all apart from someone saying, ‘Well, you put the chute on here and you pull this. Oh no, we never had parachute drill. We had dinghy drill but I never, we never had —
MH: What was dingy drill?
BT: Eh? They used to take you to the local swimming pool.
MH: Baths.
BT: Swimming baths, and they’d throw a seven man dinghy in the water upside down and you wear a flying suit and a Mae West and you’d got to go in there, swim in, swim to the dinghy and turn it upright. It’s quite a job and it was. On the bottom of the dinghy there’s two hand holds and you have to hold these hand holds, pull them towards you as much as you can and then jump on the bottom of the dinghy to turn it over.
MH: Right.
BT: You finish up underneath it and that was, that’s the only dinghy drill we did.
MH: And what height did you bale out at then?
BT: Around about three to four thousand feet.
MH: And did the parachute open straight away or did you have to have a rip cord?
BT: On, on rip cord.
MH: And did anything happen on the way down?
BT: Yes. Jerry tried to kill us.
MH: Would you mind just sort of giving a bit more detail to that?
BT: Well, we all, we all baled out. The rear gunner was killed in the aircraft. The navigator went out the front and I went out of the parachute hatch and we were shaking hands on the way down and a Jerry fighter decided we were his meat and it was very naughty. But he didn’t notice the Thunderbolt behind him and the Thunderbolt, American Thunderbolt shot him down. But they shot the skipper. The skipper was killed.
MH: On the way down.
BT: On the way down on his ‘chute. Well, he was wounded. He died in hospital. So I was told.
MH: And when, when the Germans were flying at you could you feel the bullets whizzing past or, or was you just, is that what —
BT: It’s no good saying yes.
MH: No.
BT: I can’t remember.
MH: But you knew what they were trying to do?
BT: We knew what, as I say the navigator and I, Ginger and I we flew, we dropped together. We dropped in a field together and because [pause] Germans wear field grey, well, we were lying there in a field and there is a grey bloke, a grey dressed bloke dressed, heading for us. And Ginger turned around, he said, ‘Bert, shoot him.’ I said, ‘You shoot him.’ He said, [laughs] ‘I’ve lost my gun.’ And it was a good job we didn’t shoot him. He was a Dutchman wearing one of them navy blue boiler suits that had been washed and washed [laughs] and just looked like Jerry field grey.
MH: So, that point where you dropped down were you, were you behind German lines then or were you —
BT: It was a very fluid situation. Nobody knew who was where or any, if you understand what I mean. There was no front line or, it was all the time I was in Holland you couldn’t say where you were. You were in safe ground sort of thing.
MH: Yeah.
BT: It, one minute you’d be talking to your own Army sort of thing. The next minute there were Jerries but [pause] we saw, we saw a Jerry, a Jerry Tiger tank. It came looking round. Smelling around. But we had nothing to with the job. Didn’t get involved with it.
MH: What was, what was going through your mind then? You’ve been shot down, you’ve been parachuted, the Germans are trying to kill you on the way down, you’re now not quite sure where you are. What was going through this young man’s mind?
BT: I don’t know what was going through my mind. All I knew, all I could say, think was we’d got to get to the Army. We’ve got to find it [pause] I know it sounds ridiculous but I can’t remember being scared. I should have been. I should have been but I can’t remember being scared. At times now I have nightmares but it didn’t seem to work then.
MH: No. I take it you weren’t given any training how to, you know if you parachuted over enemy territory how to evade the enemy.
BT: Pardon?
MH: Were you given any training to evade the enemy?
BT: We were given lectures. You know. What to do and what not to do but it —
MH: And how did that bear out in reality when you actually got there? Did it actually make sense?
BT: It didn’t bear out because there was no one to help us if you understand what I mean. We didn’t, we didn’t run in to civilians. The only time I saw any civilians during that period was when we landed and we were taken to a farmhouse. They took us. We went in to the farmhouse and there must have been the district in this farmhouse trying to, wanting us, getting round to us you know and they couldn’t do enough for us.
MH: No.
BT: But when, once the Army picked us up I don’t, I don’t think we spoke to a civilian until we got to Brussels.
MH: And your ankle injury. How did that, what was that? What had you done to yourself?
BT: Well, the only thing [pause] I don’t know. I was the only one who was scratched apart from Pete. Pete was killed. I didn’t realise I’d been touched until we landed and then when we dropped off I felt it. But whether [pause] the only thing I could think of was a piece of shrapnel. But where it went heaven knows. There was no, nothing there. Still got the scar for it.
MH: I can imagine.
BT: It wouldn’t heal. Once the scab had been knocked off it wouldn’t heal and I was in dock oh quite a while. I remember the Group MO came to, to visit and he looked at it and they were, our, our, the squadron doc was looking after me and he turned around and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘You can’t do anything else,’ he says. ‘Just keep pouring it in.’ Yeah. But at the time I was under the weather. I was having boils and I had a Whitlow on my finger and that was, that was amusing. I I went home on leave with a Whitlow and that night, oh God I was in agony and my dad came in to me and he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And I said, ‘My finger.’ ‘He says, ‘Go to the hospital in the morning.’ So I went to Du Cane Road Hospital and they had a look. ‘Oh yes. Sit down. Sit. I’ll send someone to you.’ So I sat down and two blokes came and they were rugby three quarterbacks I think. They were both about seven foot tall and fifteen stone like Peter and they said, ‘Are you the airman with a Whitlow?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come on.’ And Du Cane Road is a teaching hospital and they took me in a theatre and there are all these seats up there and we sat down at this table and he turned around and he said, ‘Put your finger —', he put a block on the table, ‘Put your finger on there,’ he said, and he sprayed it with some blooming stuff and it was, yes, and he was chatting away quite happily and he picked up a scalpel and he banged on my finger and it just went thud and then he promptly cut it all the flipping way down and wrapped and turned round, ‘Come on.’ And we went to the plaster of Paris place and they put a splint on on my hand. Then they bound my hand up like a boxing glove and I said, ‘How can I get my jacket on?’ Fair enough. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ll pin your jacket up, put you in a sling. Fair enough. Then he gave me two pills. He said, ‘You’ll want them tonight.’ So, I said, ‘Thanks very much.’ ‘Now, you can go home on the bus.’ ‘Thank you very much.’ So anyway, I went out of the hospital on the bus and I’m standing at the bus stop and these two old ladies standing there. I heard one say to the other, ‘That poor boy,’ she says, ‘I wonder how he got his arm — [laughs] I thought to myself, I wonder if they would smile if they knew it was a Whitlow. But that was it and then for the next four months nobody wanted to know me. I used to go back to camp and oh, nothing. Go away. Go on leave. And I was on leave on and off for about four months. Then what, I don’t know how true it is or what it is but they were on about something that we’d been behind enemy lines and we’d come back and if we went again we could be shot. What it is I don’t know but anyhow, it was—
MH: They didn’t want to be associated with you just in case you got shot down again or something.
BT: No. Anyhow, we they decided that we could [pause] I stayed on leave and I was home on leave with the wife at night. Just got in bed. Gone to bed. The doorbell goes so I go to the door. ‘Yes?’ Telegraph boy. Well, I’d still got a brother in the Army and I thought, Derek. No. “Flight Sergeant Turner.” Oh. “Return to unit.” Oh. The next day I go back to unit. ‘Wing Commander Baker wants you.’ ‘Oh, right.’ Goes to see Wing Commander Baker. ‘Ah, Turner. I want to do some flying.’ ‘Yes,’ What’s that to do with me? ‘But my navigator and my flight engineer are sick.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ ‘Well, Greenwell’s decided he’ll fly with me. You don’t mind do you?’ Well, how the hell do you say no to a wing commander? So, ‘Yes, sir.’ So fair enough. ‘We’re doing a cross country tomorrow.’ Fair enough. So we do a cross country with Wing Commander Baker. Now, my pilot was good. I’m not saying Wing Commander Baker was bad but my pilot was good. And the Stirling that they got ready for us they filled with Australian petrol. So, when we come in to land we’re down the runway. Oh dear. A few nights later he decides we’re doing a bullseye on Leeds so we do a bullseye on Leeds and they put the same petrol in the plane and we come down [pause] oh dear. And Wing Commander Baker turned round, he said, ‘That’s twice I’ve done that.’ And Ginger said, ‘Yes, I know sir. We were with you both times.’ ‘No need to be nasty, Greenwell.’ ‘No sir.’ Turner. 19th of February the tannoy goes. ‘Flight Sergeant Turner report to Wing Commander Baker.’ ‘Yes sir.’ Down to Wing Commander Baker. ‘Ahh Turner. My navigator is better so we don’t need Greenwell.’ So I said ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘But Morgan is still bad.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘Well, I want to operate.’ Oh dear. That’s a bad idea. ‘Yes.’ ‘You don’t mind do you?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘Right.’ So, December, February the 20th and we know the war’s nearly over and they’re trying to keep Jerry this side, this side of the Rhine. They don’t want him to reform on the other side of the Rhine so they’re knocking down all the bridges on the river to stop him and we got the job. So we flew to Holland and we attacked this bridge at the Waal. On the Waal at a place called Rees and it was a nightmare. It was the worst night. The worst trip I ever had. And then just to cap it all Jerry jet jobs were on the job. So we were shot up by the flak and shot down by a Jerry fighter.
MH: Jet fighter that shot you down was it?
BT: And out of the, out of an aeroplane I jumped again. I landed in a pig sty up to my flipping knees and I didn’t know whether I was in Germany or Holland or where I was. I’d no idea. I was on my own. And then a soldier came marching through the blooming door and he said, ‘Where is he?’ I said, ‘Who are you after?’ Oh, he said, ‘You’re English.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I was told it was a Jerry.’ I said, ‘No.’ So we went back. I went back to them and I was, I was no how. I remember him giving me a glass of rum and they took us back to a place called Tilburg, I think it was. and flew us home in an air ambulance. But Wing Commander Baker and Flight Sergeant Gordon were killed. And that was the end of my flying career.
MH: What were your thoughts the second time you floated down from a plane?
BT: I couldn’t tell you what I thought. I don’t know. I don’t, honestly. As far as I know I was terrified and [pause] at —
MH: What sort of height did you drop from this time? Similar sort of height?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: What sort of height did you parachute from this time?
BT: About seven thousand feet.
MH: Oh, that was a bit further up.
BT: And we were pretty high.
MH: I take it the two that lost their lives were they did they lose their life in the plane or as a result of the plane crashing? Didn’t they get out or —
BT: I don’t know. I don’t know. All I remember is Baker telling us to bale out. The navigator, bomb aimer and the wireless op and myself got out.
MH: What was it like suddenly seeing these jet powered planes? I take it you’d heard about them before then or —
BT: No. It was the nearest thing I could put it down to it’s the same as looking at one of these sci-fi comics. You know. It just didn’t seem real.
MH: No. Extremely quick.
BT: Hmmn?
MH: Were they flying extremely quick?
BT: It seemed they were there and gone you see before you looked, you know. It [pause] it’s, it’s an episode I can’t really remember and I’m not sorry about that.
MH: No. I can appreciate that. So, at that point you then become a twice holder of the Caterpillar Club badge.
BT: I I never got the second one.
MH: Didn’t you? Oh right.
BT: No. I did get the first.
MH: Oh right.
BT: The first, on my jacket. Oh God. Excuse me.
MH: And I take it, do they come from the manufacturers of the parachutes?
BT: The first one [pause] this one the adjutant of the squadron applied for it and got it for all of us. But the second one I heard nothing at all.
MH: Can I take a picture of that before we finish, Bert? If that’s ok?
[pause]
MH: So they owe you one then.
BT: Yeah, they owe me, they owe me the train fare from blooming Paddington to Keevil. Well, my dad my dad paid.
MH: Yeah. Yeah. So, so that was the, that was it for your flying then after that second one.
BT: Yeah. I finished flying then. I went to [pause] I went to Gillingham in Kent in the office. I was tootling around there and the Warrant Officer Powell came to me one day. He said, ‘Ah, Mr Turner.’ I’ve got my WO for Arnhem. When I got back to Shepherd’s Grove, I think. Shepherd’s Grove. Not, yeah Shepherds Grove, the wing commander was a South African captain and he turned around and told, he said, and he turned around, he told me, ‘I’ve put you in for an award,’ he said, ‘They refused it. So you’re having your warrant. Money will do you more good anyhow.’ And that was it and I went to Gillingham and Warrant Officer Powell came to me. He says, ‘I’ve found a job for you.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes?’ ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘There’s an orderly room at Roborough.’ He said, ‘I want you to go there and run it.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not —’ ‘Oh, you’ll manage.’ He said, ‘You’ll manage.’ He said, ‘You’re in charge.’ I said, ‘Am I in charge?’ He said, ‘You’re the only one.’ So I went to a little aerodrome just outside Plymouth. A place called Roborough, and I think it was run by ex-aircrew. Every, everywhere you looked there were aircrew that had finished. Of course, the war had finished and it was, it was, it was an eye opener. We went there and as I say I was orderly room clerk and station warrant officer. The CO was a chap called Hill. Henry Horace Hill. He was a flight lieutenant observer and he used to mess at Plymouth and he used to travel by motorbike and sidecar from Roborough to Plymouth.
MH: When did your demob come along then?
BT: Yeah. Then demob came and I went bus conducting. I went down the mines. I tried, I went to oh, TI Industries, Simplex and I couldn’t settle anywhere. I don’t know why. But then I went to a place Cartwright and Edwards to, on a pot bank. And I started dipping and finished up on the kilns and that was it. I finished up. I did thirty five years working for a pot bank.
MH: Any thought of going back to London? Was it always that your wife —
BT: It’s never bothered me. I like, I’ve been down to visits but when mum died the family broke up. It, of course the problem was we were all away from home at the time. I mean my brothers were in the Air Force, in the Army and I married as I say and I came up to Stoke on Trent. Derek married and he went to Manchester. We corresponded for a bit and then then somehow or other it, you know how it is. Things don’t go as you plan and we lost touch. I don’t know where any of my family are now [pause] No idea. But [pause] I haven’t, I don’t miss London at all.
MH: So when we just go back to when you, just for my benefit and I suppose the people who will listen to this interview. What was your, what did your job entail on the Stirling? What was your —
BT: Main, mainly you were watching petrol consumption and changing tanks.
MH: To balance the plane out and —
BT: No. For, a Stirling’s got fourteen petrol tanks.
MH: Right.
BT: At least. It can fit another six. I know it sounds stupid but it is. There’s a little bomb bay at the root of the wings and it’s room for three bombs. Or three petrol tanks in each.
MH: Each side.
BT: Wing each side. We had, one holds three hundred and twenty gallons, two hundred and forty and then as it gets towards the it’s [pause] [unclear] of petrol but you had to change tanks. But you always got rid of your small tanks first.
MH: Now then, you ended up flying, was it Stirling 4s was the last Mark you flew?
BT: Yeah. Yeah.
MH: Now, were they, how did they differ from the, I think you said you flew Stirling 1s at the start, didn’t you?
BT: Well, there was no front turret and there was no mid-upper turret on a Stirling 4. They took the turrets out. And there was a big hole cut towards the rear of the fuselage where the paratroops jumped or dropped out.
MH: And that, the plane was principally marked as a Mark 4 because they did it for parachutists and —
BT: Yeah.
MH: Dropping supplies.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And what have you.
BT: Yeah.
MH: So did you lose some of your crew from when you first started?
BT: Oh yes. We lost a mid-upper gunner. Yeah. A mid-upper gunner that we’d [pause] Teddy Roper. We lost him. I never heard what happened to Ted. He, he was an Essex boy as I remember. Essex or Kent. And he had a girlfriend Penny [ Lopey ]
MH: The things you remember.
BT: The things you think of.
MH: Yes. And did you keep in touch with any of your crewmates after the war?
BT: The last one, Leo. The last one.
MH: Yeah. Leo Hartman.
BT: Leo Hartman. He died at Christmas.
MH: Oh dear.
BT: Yes. I’ve got a copy of his logbook.
MH: Was that the logbook you mentioned to me earlier on when we first met?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: That you had lost your logbook.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And you said that you had a copy of one of your crewmate’s.
BT: Yeah. Yeah.
MH: So, you kept in touch with Leo all the way through up until he passed away.
BT: Well, we did. Just Leo didn’t go on the last one. Leo. Leo, when we came back from Arnhem Leo went to London and he never, he never, he went to Uxbridge and stayed there ‘til the end of the war ‘til he was demobbed. But we kept in touch. I kept in touch with Pete Findlay until he died. But McQuiggan wasn’t interested and Ginger, the navigator he was too far away. He was up, he lived at Fencehouses in Durham.
MH: Right.
BT: That way. And we went in, he went to take up, to a pub. Became a landlord I believe. He got a DFM for the trip we did to France and he died of cancer. Thirty odd years. He was sixty something when he died. And I I met Pete [Bodes] brother and his wife.
MH: That was your rear gunner.
BT: Yeah.
MH: Was that a difficult meeting?
BT: Yes. They want particulars and it’s not nice. Did he get, did it hurt? I don’t think being hit by a cannon shell hurts. But, he had a girlfriend on the station, a WAAF and she had that you know that purple mark on her face.
MH: A birthmark.
BT: Yeah. And it was rather bad and she’d been up to, for some reason and [pause] and I had [pause] when you get talking like this it, it comes back.
MH: Like I said before if there are things you don’t want to talk about then just say.
BT: But, no. It [pause] it’ll pass.
MH: So, we’ve got all these thirty one, thirty two missions that you’d fly in the end.
BT: Thirty one. Yeah.
MH: What was life like in between? You watch these television films of, sort of flying boys down the pub and then back to reality.
BT: I get so cross at times when I watch these films. It’s, I mean I watch the Dambusters and I’m ready to hit someone.
MH: Because it’s not how it was.
BT: They get it so wrong. Well, I mean they’re, they’re supposed to have advisors and when they get the basics wrong it’s time to pack up. Now, you take the Dambusters. It’s nothing. It’s wrong, but it’s nothing. They’re having egg and bacon before they go. They sit down for a meal in the film. You didn’t have egg and bacon before you went. You had egg and bacon when you came back and blokes used to joke, ‘Can I have your egg if you don’t come back?’ And if you look, you watch there’s three Lancasters taking off in line abreast on a grass aerodrome. On a grass airfield. Carrying mines? They’d dig in.
MH: You’d take off one after the other on a hardstanding. A hard strip.
BT: Used tarmac runways. You know, I mean it’s only [pause]
MH: But that’s film for you, isn’t it?
BT: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MH: I think we’ve, we’re probably coming very close to the tape running out. Not that there’s a tape
BT: Yeah.
MH: But another fascinating hour and a half. Is there else that you think you need to tell me? You want to tell me.
BT: I don’t think so. It’s, I mean, I’ve always [pause] I’ve always thought I had a good war. I had a pretty clean war. It’s only when I think of the last op that I get a bit maudlin. It, I was lucky. But I met some decent people. I, we go, we are very fortunate we’ve, we’ve got in with a group, “D-Day Revisited,” and we go to France every June. And we go to Arnhem because I make a point in September of going to Arnhem and going and seeing the lads. I take a wreath to the skipper and he’s still the skipper seventy odd years later. But we go to, go to a little village in France, Arromanches and we were there this year and Pete turns around to me and said, ‘Bert, two blokes here want to shake hands with you.’ I thought right. Turned around and there’s a group captain and an air vice marshall. And I turned around to him, I said, I pointed to groupie, I said, ‘That’s God.’ I said, ‘And that one I don’t know.’ But I mean they’re nice chaps. They’re, they talk to me as if we’re equals and all the rest. You wouldn’t dream of it happening [laughs] I mean, I don’t, I don’t think I spoke to our group captain, and I couldn’t tell you his name, in all the time I was on the squadron.
MH: Different times.
BT: But we meet these chaps and they seem to be interested.
MH: I don’t think they seem to be, I think they are Bert. I think they are being polite.
BT: Did you say you wanted a photograph?
MH: Right. Right. So, I think I’ve asked all the questions. Thank you for giving your time. I know there’s some difficult things we’ve talked about but as you say, you know —
BT: I’m sorry if it’s been boring.
MH: Quite the opposite. It’s been fascinating. Its been absolutely fascinating. It’s been a privilege to sit and listen to you.
BT: It’s —
MH: And I think the important thing is in the future people will be able to listen to your words.
BT: Oh.
MH: And the things that you did, and I think we have to remember you were a twenty something young man, weren’t you?
BT: Well, this is it. We were. We were kids. We were, we were enjoying ourselves. We, it was a big adventure.
MH: Yeah. When you get older you start to look back and think well as you get older and experience affects you do different things.
BT: Oh, that’s a different matter, isn’t it?
MH: Yeah. It is. Right. I’m going to turn the tape recorder off. We’ve been going for oh an hour and twenty six minutes so its twenty five past, twenty six minutes past two.
BT: Oh, are you alright, Peter?
PB: I’m alright. Yeah.
MH: Peter has been very well behaved. I’m very grateful, Peter for your time as well.
PB: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bert Turner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Martyn Horndern
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATurnerHA180829, PTurnerHA1801
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Bert Turner was a member of the Air Training Corps before the war. He volunteered for the Air Force and was called up 2 August 1942. After training he became a flight engineer with 196 Squadron. He flew some bombing and mine laying operations before the squadron was transferred to Transport Command. He remembers dropping supplies to the Special Operations Executive and paratroopers on D-Day. His Stirling was hit by anti-aircraft fire on a supply drop over France but they managed to return to England. He was later shot down by Fw 190s over Holland. His rear gunner was killed he describes how they were attacked while on their parachutes. He was wounded in the ankle by shrapnel. He evaded and met up with Allied troops. After returning to operations after a lengthy convalescence, he was shot down a second time by a Me 262 over Germany. He discusses the role of the flight engineer on Stirlings. When Bert returned to London he decided he was so close he would go and visit his father not knowing that he had received the telegram saying he was missing presumed killed. When he saw his son he thought he was a ghost and passed out.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Dorset
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
Netherlands--Arnhem
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:23:36 audio recording
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
1657 HCU
196 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
evading
flight engineer
Fw 190
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 262
medical officer
military ethos
military service conditions
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
RAF Keevil
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Tuddenham
shot down
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/947/10643/LMathersRW55201v2.2.pdf
55bec3251d71f385ab46787c57ae829d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mathers, Ronald
R W Mathers
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Ronald Mathers DFC (55201 Royal Air Force) and consists of his log books, photographs, correspondence, his decorations, and copies of two letters from Dwight Eisenhower to Sir Arthur Harris. Ronald Mathers completed a tour of operations as a pilot with 9 Squadron from RAF Bardney. After the war he took part in victory flypasts and a Goodwill tour of the United States with 35 Squadron. The collection also contains a scrapbook of the Goodwill Tour to the United States.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Heidi Peace and Ingrid Peters, and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mathers, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ronald Mathers pilots flying log book. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for Ronald Mathers covering the period from 1 October 1944 to 24 February 1948. Detailing his flying training, instructor duties and duties with 35 squadron. He was stationed at RAF Swinderby, RAF Finningley, RAF Hullavington, RAF Gravely, RAF Stradishall and RAF Scampton. Aircraft flown were, Stirling, Lancaster, Oxford, Wellington, Hotspur, Auster, Harvard, Reliant, Hudson, Halifax, Dakota, Warwick, Lincoln, Meteor, Spitfire, Buckmaster, Mosquito and Anson. He also flew operation Goodwill to America, visiting Lagens, Gander, Mitchel Field, Scott Field, Lowry Field, Long Beach Field, Kelly Field, Andrew Field and Westover Field.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMathersRW55201v2
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
United States
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
California--Long Beach
Colorado--Denver
Illinois--Belleville
Massachusetts--Chicopee
Maryland--Camp Springs
Newfoundland and Labrador--Gander
New York (State)--Long Island
Texas--San Antonio
Azores--Lajes
California
Colorado
Illinois
Maryland
Massachusetts
New York (State)
Texas
Newfoundland and Labrador
Canada
Azores
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1660 HCU
35 Squadron
Anson
C-47
forced landing
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Halifax
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Lancaster
Lincoln
Meteor
Mosquito
Oxford
RAF Finningley
RAF Graveley
RAF Hullavington
RAF Scampton
RAF Stradishall
RAF Swinderby
Spitfire
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/104/10708/LEdwardsED1236492v1.1.pdf
07b0a2fcf163a00e5cf50a0b98dfd28b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Edwards, Ellis
E D Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection concerns Sergeant Ellis Drury Edwards (1236492 Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook, memorial booklet and four letters. Ellis Edwards was a bomb aimer with 149 Squadron and flew operations from RAF Lakenheath. He was killed when his Halifax crashed on an operation to Berlin 30 March 1943. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Pauline Harkett and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Ellis Edwards is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/208271/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Edwards, ED
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Ellis Edwards’ South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book
Description
An account of the resource
South African Air Force observers or air gunners log book for Ellis Edwards, bomb aimer, covering the period from 9 February 1942 to 29 March 1943 when he was missing in action on an operation to Berlin. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at SAAF Port Elizabeth, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Stradishall and RAF Lakenheath. Aircraft flown in were, Blenheim, Battle, Anson, Oxford, Wellington and Stirling. He flew a total of 11 night operations with 149 squadron. Targets were, Lorient, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Essen, Bordeaux, Stuttgart and Berlin. <span>His pilot on operations was</span><span> </span>Pilot Officer Fulton.
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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One booklet
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEdwardsED1236492v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Suffolk
France--Lorient
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Scotland--Lossiemouth
South Africa--Port Elizabeth
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
149 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
bomb aimer
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
mine laying
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/734/10732/ACattyMA180822.2.mp3
56b4756625ebdbc6366c390a3d646d10
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Catty, Martin Arthur
M A Catty
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. An oral history interview with Martin Catty (b. 1923, 1802887, 164193 Royal Air Force), log books, photographs, service documents, maps, and folders containing navigation and Gee charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 514 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Martin Catty and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Catty, MA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: Start. Yes.
DE: Start so this is an interview with Martin Catty. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s the 22nd of August 2018 and we are at Riseholme Hall. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. So, Martin would you mind telling me a little bit about your early life and what you did before you joined Bomber Command?
MC: Yes. What I can recollect. I lived in Hendon in London and went to a prep school locally and then afterwards to a prep school in Surrey, at Crowthorne and then on to Highgate School in London where I was until we were evacuated to Westward Ho at the beginning of the war and we took over mostly what United Services College had left at Westward Ho. You know, Stalky and Co and all that. There was the Kingsley Gymnasium and places like that and we took over certain cafes for classrooms and, and so forth. And then after I had taken my O levels we got this visit from the RAF offering us a short course at university to do the Initial Training Wing stuff at, on the short course and study either engineering or other, other more academic subjects I suppose. Anyhow, and therefore that was lasting six months from, from April ‘42 to about September ‘42. I was at Pembroke College, Cambridge for that and then after that course where I apparently did, compared to some of the others quite well which meant that at the end of the war I was invited to go back to Cambridge University although to tell the truth I hadn't got the qualifications to do so. But I was invited back. Anyhow, so then I went to St John’s Wood where we joined the RAF proper. Got kitted out, inoculated and God knows what. Queued for about three hours in the basement of a St John’s Wood block of flats and then got posted to Sywell outside Northampton for grading. Pilot grading, you know. Where I was successful to be graded for pilot training. Then went up to [pause] No. We didn't immediately go up there. They had got all the transport at that time was being used for building up the Second Front. Therefore, we were sent up to Whitley Bay. The RAF Regiment place where they loved to get their hands on aircrew chaps [laughs] We were, I was very fortunate in being with a young Sergeant who really wanted to teach us things rather than take the Mick out of us. So we had a fortnight there and were promised Christmas leave afterwards. It was pretty awful actually because the quarters were bombed out houses, no windows, no hot water and just a blanket. So, it was and we were up in the morning, freezing morning in about December holding rifles, no gloves [laughs] Anyhow, it was. And then we were sent after that, after Christmas to Brighton which was the RAF Discip School where naughty pilots were disciplined and so forth and we spent about a fortnight there I think waiting for transport to turn up. The only, well visible thing I think [pause] I remember being put on jankers for something but I can't remember what it was for [laughs] And we won a drill competition so we were allowed leave to go to London where my parents lived. And then in, we were sent up to Heaton Park in Manchester which was a sort of transit camp on the way to Canada. And from there we went to West Kirby somewhere where we were, no, to Liverpool. We were taken out on a tender to a big ship on the, well a small ship on the horizon but as it got nearer and nearer it turned out to be the QE which of course was never fitted out as a passenger ship. It was fitted out immediately as a troop ship because it had only just been launched before the war. So we went out to Canada on that. About six hundred of us jammed into this little batch of cabins in the middle with about four bunks high. Twenty four to a cabin, I think and the whole ship, rest of the ship was empty except for the officers wives upstairs where I fortunately got as a duty baggage party which meant I went down the hold to get a trunk that some officer’s wife had said she didn't want during the journey and suddenly realised she did [laughs]. So we, well we, it was very easy manhandling because as the ship came down you could take a great big trunk, jam it on the companionway and then you could handle. It had the advantage that at the end of the trip when we landed at New York the rest of the people went straight up to Canada but we were given an extra day in New York to get the luggage and so forth and then taken up to Moncton in New Brunswick in Canada the next day. Or taken up, we were put on board a plane where the Canadian flight lieutenant wanted to impress us how good Canada was and we were treated very well. Then we walked into the camp and I remember being greeted by some corporal, ‘Oh, Catty MA. Martial Arts are you? Oh right.’ [laughs] So all my life I’ve been, wanting to be, I am now Master of Arts anyhow [laughs] but, and then we were posted to Virden in Manitoba. EFTS where we did the, obviously the Elementary Flying Training. We got through that alright. No problems really.
DE: What aircraft were you flying there?
MC: Tiger Moths.
DE: Right.
MC: Yeah. The Tiger Moths at Grading School of course was one without a canopy. Open cockpits. The one in Canada had canopies because of the very low temperatures we flew in even at low heights. I mean it was sometimes minus forty below. Things like that. So anyhow I got through that alright. In fact, I got the Ground School Award which I think stood me in bad stead later on but be that as it may [laughs] and got posted on to SFTS at Brandon which was not far from Virden actually. And then I was within about a month of completing the pilot’s course when I unfortunately was in the flight hangar when somebody arrived from Central Flying School to do, to grade the station and the chap they had selected to go up with him wasn't there so they sent me up with him and he didn't like it. In the end he said my flying was too mechanical. So I ceased flying training as a pilot, went to a manning depot, also in Brandon which was a terrible, well we were in a cattle market with about, God knows how many, four hundred people sleeping in a cattle market with bunks about four high and they’d got nothing to do with us except send us for route marches [laughs]
DE: Not very pleasant then.
MC: No. And of course, because we’d ceased flying training you lost your flying pay so we were on two thirds of the pay we were used to. So you could hardly afford to have a beer let alone anything else. However, that lasted about a month before I eventually got a posting to Winnipeg. Number 5 AOS. Where we flew Ansons which was not the plane I was on at the SFTS. That was a Cessna Crane. And well, I suppose I spent the usual course. When we graduated at the end of it we were not sent home because all the transport again was tied up with Second Front sort of thing and then they sent us, most unusually on leave.
DE: Right.
MC: Went to Niagara, went to New York. I had an uncle who lived in Stamford Connecticut so I went with him but they dressed for dinner so I couldn't stand that [laughs] I don't know why I'm telling you all this.
DE: No. It's interesting. It’s great stuff.
MC: Really? [laughs] And so, eventually we got on the Andes to come back from, I think it was, was it Halifax? I can't remember the port. Whatever. Which was basically an almost flat-bottomed thing designed for going up the Amazon and rolled like mad. Again, because I forgot to say this but when we went on the short course one of the promises was that when you graduated you'd be commissioned so of course we did get commissioned which meant of course we didn't get our uniform. So the people who didn’t get commissioned got flocked around by all the ladies of New York whereas we looked like erks and didn't get any.
DE: Oh dear.
MC: That didn’t matter. Anyhow, we left, I think on the 30th March ’44. The day of the Nuremberg raid because as we were sailing out of the harbour the 9:00 o'clock news came on and it said ninety odd of our aircraft were missing or something and we said, ‘Turn it around.’ [laughs] However, we eventually got back and went to Harrogate to get kitted and get the uniform and so forth. Just arrived in time to be best man at my brother’s wedding. My elder brother who was also in the RAF. I'd only had my uniform for about a week and then got posted to OTU at Chipping Warden. And there as I mentioned to someone else some of the aircraft were pretty ropey. They were Wellingtons. We called them Wimpies.
DE: Yes.
MC: 1Cs and things like that and one of them actually the wing fell off in the air, you know. So it’s, but I don't know, one I’ve accepted these things. And I crewed up, of course at that stage and I crewed up with this Canadian skipper, Flight Lieutenant Ness, Johnny Ness. There’s a photograph of him. I don't remember the actual process of being selected. Who went with whom. I think the skipper probably said, ‘Oh, that chap.’ I don't know but, so after getting crewed up etcetera at OTU, one or two weren’t because the Wimpy would not take seven people of course as crew. I think the gunners joined us later. Went to Con Unit, conversion to four engine aircraft at Stradishall and then on to Lanc Finishing School. LFS at Feltwell. Then got posted to Number 514 Squadron at Waterbeach and that's how I have arrived at Waterbeach.
DE: Right.
MC: And then we, I mean quite frankly at the time I got there which was about October ’44, somewhere like that it was, the chop rate had fallen right down to a very low rate. Something like five percent. Something like that. Whereas it was of course at times very, the chance of finishing a tour of opps was very [pause] but we were. So I’ve got to say it was a fairly easy time we had there. It was 3 Group and 3 Group concentrated on GH bombing. I don't know if you are aware of that. Basically, Gee was navigation which I think relied on ground stations sending out signals which the aircraft reflected and we bombed on GH which was the aircraft transmitting the ground through reflecting. I think I've got that the right way around. I'm not sure. So, in fact, as navigator since we did a lot of daylight raids over the Ruhr I used to release the bombs more than the bomb aimer. I think I did more daylights than night trips. I'm sure I did. The logbook will —
DE: We’ll have a look at your logbook.
MC: But I think I finished my tour in March, something like that and I joined, Waterbeach was also number 33 base which controlled two other stations. Mepal and Witchford I think, and I joined the base test crew which tested all Lancasters coming in to the base whether Waterbeach or going to one of the others as navigator which of course wasn't a very great amount of navigation to do. And that's where I more or less was when as I hear [John Toddy], the chap I flew with on Lancasters who I was very pally with said to me, ‘I volunteered you for ferrying aircraft, Lancs out to the Far East.’ And it was going to be done in three stages. UK to Egypt, Egypt to India and India to Burma or wherever they were going to be used. But in, so having been sent to Morecambe to get kitted out with, I mean, you know, shorts and everything else and having inoculations, Yellow Fever, goodness knows what else they cancelled it because it was obviously getting to the stage, getting near VJ Day and it wasn't needed anymore. But we were, being in [unclear] by that time. We went to Talbenny in Wales first. I think, I can’t remember, again, it was number 1630. Anyhow, whatever unit we were and then that was transferred to Dunkeswell in Devon which was an American base up to that stage. One of the things of course that may be amusing I don't know but we found a whole lot of lovely American leather boots. You know, booties or whatever you want to call them. They were wonderful. And they were all left foot. There wasn’t a right foot amongst them [laughs] which wasn’t very [laughs] Anyhow, that’s just in passing. From there on our crew got selected to take a ground crew from Air Ministry out to the Middle East to train all the various Middle East ground crew stations how to service Lancs. So we took the Lanc out to [Khormarksar]. Whatever. Wherever we landed we’d say goodbye chops see you in a fortnight's time. They did their job teaching the crews and we did well when we went where we liked. More or less. Although it was the time of the troubles. We had to wear sidearms. You know, the Palestine and Israel. Palestine troubles. Went to several stations out there. Shaibah. In fact, I had my birthday at Shaibah if I remember rightly. And well eventually got back obviously at Christmas. And a little tale, I don't suppose it’s really amusing but we, in Cairo a Liberator landed and we knew the crew because they were from Waterbeach. And so we got flown back supernumerary crew to Waterbeach. So we went out to the brewery tap there where we knew the landlord and the skipper produced a bottle of Curacao or something like that and said, ‘Here you are lad. This is for you.’ And the voice from the back, which turned out to be the Customs man said, ‘That doesn't look like fresh fruit either.’ [laughs] Right. So thereafter my skipper got demobbed and I was, well in time I got crewed up or went as navigator with Wing Commander Tubby Baldwin who, we were flying an Anson 19, I think it was, out to Cairo to Misr Airlines. It was fitted out as a passenger aircraft. So we lobbed down in several places on the way obviously. Got to Cairo and ended up, I ended up training as instructing pilots in BABS, Blind Approach Beacon System. The radar system that had just been brought out and I went to Melbourne in Yorkshire and Bramcote in Warwickshire, you know. Obviously, there was a pilot with the pilot training. We were telling them what to do and how to use it and so forth. And that's how I ended my career in the RAF.
DE: Right. So when were you, when were you released? When were you demobbed?
MC: Either September, October. I think it was October ‘46 when I went up to Cambridge because they’d asked me if I’d like to go back.
DE: Right.
MC: And I managed to do it on normal release. I didn't have to take out Class B release did they call it or something where you went for early release. But anyhow I spent three years at Cambridge which I did some studying. But I really wasn't qualified because I hadn't got the maths training. It was really necessary. Particularly at Cambridge for an engineering course because not only did you now have to use a formula. You knew how to, you were taught how to derive the formula. You know, you were never taught really how to use things.
DE: Right.
MC: So, anyhow that was my, the end of my service with the RAF.
DE: So, what did you do after university?
MC: I went as a, to GEC in Birmingham, Witton, Birmingham, on a graduate apprenticeship course and then took jobs in management supervisory sort of rather than using my engineering studies as such where more my training to be able to think things through. And stayed in, if you like in management until we moved around once or twice but I stayed with GEC the rest of my career.
DE: Ok. Wonderful.
MC: I think I held the very rare distinction of turning a Tiger Moth upside down.
DE: Oh, you must tell me about that.
MC: Well, I was out solo. Out solo and I saw this black line on the horizon. I thought that's a bit strange. What's that? And then it got bigger and bigger and I suddenly realised it was a dust storm approaching. Fortunately, I was upwind of the station so I just landed as the storm hit us. The wind was so great that my ground speed landing was something like five knots or ten knots and it was very [pause] and you know you, and you were surrounded so as I turned across wind to go towards the flight hangar, the wind got under the tailplane, lifted the tailplane, got under the wing and the tailplane went over so slowly. I heard the, there was a fuel gauge on the top wing of a Tiger Moth and that went and then the prop broke and there I was upside down. Nothing on the clock. And the ground crew came out and said, ‘Oh, okay. Are you alright?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, I'm glad as you came you didn't release your belt. The last chap who did this fell down and broke his hip.’ [laughs] So, and then I was released out and then the doc came out, the MO. ‘Taxiing accident?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you feel alright?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Cheerio.’ By that time the ground crew had gone. There I was in the middle of the ‘drome with my parachute slung over my shoulder walking back all the way to the flight. Fortunately, I was greeted by the flight commander who said. ‘Don't worry Martin. I’ve done it in a prop myself.’ He said, ‘The ground crew should have been on your wing almost as soon as you'd landed. It wasn't your fault.’ So I didn't get any trouble from that.
DE: So, no black mark against you.
MC: No. So I don't think there are any more interesting, well if that's of interest I don't know but be at that as it may.
DE: Is it OK if we just go back through a few things?
MC: Yes. Certainly.
DE: I’ll ask you a few questions.
MC: Yeah.
DE: You know, you said that when, I think you were in Brighton you, you were put on jankers.
MC: Well, I can't remember why I was put on jankers. I think some cheeky remark I made of some sort and some Warrant Officer heard it and it wasn't too bad. It was peeling potatoes and things like that you know but of course the other thing I don't know what the local population said because we were up early and the PE instructor would take us for drill before breakfast and he sang, ‘Come on you wankers.’ [laughs] And the local population [laughs] had to listen to this. However, and then at Brighton we, as I say we managed to be the Flight that did the best drill so we were given a pass to have a forty eight hour pass for the weekend in London. But the actual reason I can’t because we were stationed in the Grand Hotel but we ate in the Metropole Hotel. I can't remember much more about it.
DE: Never mind.
MC: Yeah.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit more about what life was like at Waterbeach?
MC: Yeah. Well, it was very pleasant. The food was good. Mind you I was obviously commissioned so in the officer’s mess and therefore we were just, I would say we had twice as good food as the general population if not more. We were looked after very well from that point of view. You could get in to Cambridge very easily. There was transport in to Cambridge. It was an enjoyable life I’ve got to say. Ok. And at that time the operations were not that scary, you know.
DE: What were they like?
MC: Well, most of it I was, being a navigator I was immersed in my charts and Gee screens and things like that. Never looked out of the aircraft from one moment to the next and therefore, it was quite easy. Because of my flying experience and pilot training I used to give the skipper a bit of relief once we were over friendly territory and takeover the aircraft. In fact, there’s a picture of me sitting in the pilot's [pause] which was all very good but I’d be there for about half an hour or so until we were getting a bit nearer the station, the ‘drome and I had to get busy, get back and cook my log like mad as if I’d been actually navigating. Which was alright at times except a lot of the logs have comments on them. ‘You should have done more.’ Got more. And the reason I didn't was because I was piloting the aircraft [laughs] Which was alright. There was one time. Oh, by that time we had H2S, right, which the bomb aimer could was using to navigate us if you like while I was not navigating which was all very well until the one time he mistook, I'm not sure where maybe the Dutch thing. Anyhow, for Brussels and we arrived half an hour earlier than any other plane from the squadron which took a bit of [laughs] the nav officer said, ‘Why are your winds in a different direction to everybody else?’ However, that was life. It didn't worry one at all and I've got to admit that our operational life although we were doing, the tour was forty ops at that stage not thirty and in fact, the pilot used to do forty ops because his first op was one flying with another crew to get used to it. And the rest of the crew did thirty nine. Except I didn't of course because I volunteered to be a navigator to an Australian pilot who had, his navigator was ill. So I actually did forty trips. And that was a bit of a strange crew. However —
DE: What way was that strange?
MC: Well, I'm not sure that I should tell you [laughs] In the sense that once they got up to operational height they all lit fags. Now, that was completely verboten basically but, so I didn't join them I might say partly because I probably didn't have any with me [laughs] So what? They were still a very efficient crew. Darby Monroe was his name.
DE: I know there was some American aircraft and the stories go they had ashtrays.
MC: Really? Yeah. Well, of course one of my problems which were, you know, I’ve always from my very early days I had bladder problems and it was great that the Lanc had an Elsan at the back. When I, it's very strange, probably the first half hour I would want to go about four or five times. The rest of the trip I didn't. It didn’t happen. However, and of course well I've got to say that by and large it was a very enjoyable time on operations. The only thing I ever really saw was to feel the ack ack you know under the aircraft and so forth. We lost an engine once but nothing more than that. So we had a very good, I mean he was a good skipper, Johnny Ness and he was considerably older than I was but we got on very well together and I wonder what has happened to him since but, and of course as soon as we finished the tour he got posted to Canada. Back to Canada whereas I stayed on the station. [pause] Anyhow, that’s my war experience.
DE: Ok. You mentioned it was very easy to get into Cambridge. What, what sort of things did you do when you weren’t on ops and you had some, had some time?
MC: Went to pubs [laughs] I was not a dancer so I didn't go dancing. And well, went to one or two films and things like that. But I don't really recollect that much about it except one used to drink quite a lot in those days and if you weren't going to Cambridge you went to the bar and drank it there [laughs]. But I actually met my wife at a mess party at, in the officer’s mess and when I went back to Cambridge we hooked up again and eventually got married. In fact, I got married as an undergraduate because I was on a grant of course and you got an extra, you got a married grant if you got married. I mean we —
DE: Makes sense.
MC: Were really looked after. No. We were looked after very well. But obviously partly because at school I went up the Classics side of things and only swapped to the science side because I was looking at the stage or my father was looking to get me in the Navy but in the end I went and my brother being in the RAF anyhow, and he was stationed around here. Fiskerton, I think. 49 Squadron. Which I think Coningsby maybe. Fiskerton. Scampton. Somewhere. I think all those names ring a bell to me.
DE: Right.
MC: To me.
DE: Yeah. So he joined the RAF a few years ahead of you.
MC: Two years to the day. Our birthdays are the same. Two years apart.
DE: And that's what? 13th of November.
MC: November. Yes. I was born on his second birthday.
DE: Oh wow. Easy to remember then.
MC: Yeah. But it had the snag that we got joint birthday presents.
DE: And it's close to Christmas as well.
MC: Yeah. However, but he had a very, much more, he was squadron nav officer anyhow. I think for 49 Squadron.
DE: And he flew Manchesters as well as Lancasters.
MC: Well, yes I think he started on Wimpies and then went on to Manchesters and then of course fortunately the Lanc came along and they were very glad to see the end of the Manchester. It was underpowered. The only other aircraft I think, aircraft that had a bit of a quirk was the Stirling which had gravity feed fuel feed. So if you turn the Stirling at a very steep angle or even upside down the engines would cut out [laughs]. Oh well. Anyhow you've got me talking a long time.
DE: No. No. Yeah. You’re doing, doing fantastically. You've been going nearly forty minutes. A couple of other questions. When we were looking at some of the things that you've brought in you said, you mentioned the intelligence officer, was it Tommy Thompson?
MC: Yes. Yes.
DE: Could you tell me a bit about him? What was he like? What was his job?
MC: Well, basically, of course, he came to every briefing and gave any intelligence about extra dangers on the way across or anything like that but he also he and his staff interviewed us as we, after we landed and he went through the trip and so forth. But he was a very good friend and we used to play snooker and have a drink together. But he was a nice chap. He wasn't aircrew. He was ground crew but he was, I got on very well with Tommy. I didn't, well I’m just trying to think of what other interaction there was with him. I don't [pause] No. Just a good pal in the mess.
DE: Right. Yeah. Did you know any of the other ground staff?
MC: Well, there was, the other person who wasn’t ex-flying was of course the adjutant. He was, I didn't know him very well but knew him by name. And probably the, we were exceptional in the RAF that we used to take our ground crew out for drinks in the village at Waterbeach. Meet them at a pub and take them for an evening drinks which was un, sort of other Services the officers would not socialise with other ranks whereas we were quite happy to do that. I mean we knew we relied on them anyhow. The only time I had any other problem with, I think ground crew was, I'm not sure which raid it was, a long distance one and the bomb aimer was doing the bombing because it was out of range of GH. Out of the range of Gee. And we, he opened the bomb doors and I actually said, ‘We're not there yet.’ You know. So he closed them again until we got to the target area. He’d seen a dummy target of some sort and unfortunately the camera took a picture of the bombs away when it actually opened the bomb doors and didn't. The bombs weren’t away. So when we got home we were accused of being umpteen miles short of the thing and we said, ‘No. No.’ And it came around to this why you stick to your story and the corporal photographer will be put on a charge or you don’t. So, we did stick to our story [pause] I don't think there's anything else I can add.
DE: Did you have anything to do with the medical officer there?
MC: No. I wouldn’t think so. No. No.[pause] I can't recollect anything to do with him anyhow.
DE: Again, just before we started recording we had a little discussion about there was an explosion there. Can you —
MC: Yeah.
DE: Could you tell me any more?
MC: We were in briefing at the time actually. In briefing, and we suddenly heard this explosion and of course the op was cancelled, briefing was cancelled and so forth and we heard afterwards it was a bomb that had dropped and exploded. And of course, there were casualties. In fact, I did ask Peter Smith I think who was showing us around the IBCC whether he, he knew of that and he did seem to know of it.
DE: Yes. I believe the names of the people who lost their lives in that explosion are on the Memorial.
MC: Are they? Oh.
DE: Still on with, with things on the ground you said you took the, you went out with the ground crew for drinks.
MC: Yeah.
DE: Did you always have the same aircraft and the same ground crew?
MC: No, but we, there was one aircraft we flew more than others, I think. Probably, was it C for Charlie? I can't remember. But there was that particular ground crew that we knew anyhow because they were, you know, in attendance when we got to the aircraft and so forth. So, we knew. We knew them and we used to invite them up probably once a month or something like that, you know. Not that regularly but just locally to the village, you know where there were plenty of pubs [laughs].
DE: Fantastic. What happened to your brother? Did he manage to finish his tour?
MC: He did finish. In fact, he seconded to BOAC and then in fact joined BOAC and flew with them out to South Africa as navigator and so forth and other places. But, South America mainly actually he flew come to think of it and on, oh, I don't know. What was it? No. I don’t know what his aircraft was but, and then he I think he was still with them when they became British Airways. Then they didn't want navigators anymore because the navigation in the Western Hemisphere had got to a stage, beacons and so forth and therefore he emigrated to New Zealand and joined Air New Zealand to train other navigators out there. But he, he had a far more torrid operational experience than I did.
DE: Yeah.
MC: Without a doubt. And he was 5 Group in this area.
DE: Yes.
MC: Whereas I was 3 Group, of course in, around the Cambridge area. And it was 3 Group who did the GH bombing basically.
DE: Yeah.
MC: So, as I said earlier I think I released the bombs as much as the bomb aimer did on [pause] but it was something one did. You didn’t have to think about it too deeply. And I suppose we all thought Bomber Harris was a hero and he stuck to his guns. But —
DE: What do you think about the way the Bomber Command and Harris and the campaign has been remembered?
MC: Well, it was, I've got to say that after a year or two one did wonder what one, what one was doing. Was it right or was it not? And, and of course that was general. I mean, that’s why Bomber Command took a long time to be recognised. Because people didn't want to talk about it and they were of course one or two instances where things, the firestorms and so forth were shocking. But actually, at the time one did what was one’s duty sort of thing but afterwards one wondered was it right. Anyway, who can tell? After the war of course, after VE Day we flew some food out or food parcels to the Netherlands and took about, about a dozen, I think Belgian refugees back to Brussels. Flew them back. One of whom was Mrs five-by-five and really because she was quite a considerable weight the skipper insisted that she go forward of the main spar. Now, I don't know if you know the main spar but like I say —
DE: Yes.
MC: But there was no way she was going to get over this and so we had to get hold of her leg and put her leg over to one side and then lift her up and rock her over it. The number of petticoats she was wearing [laughs] Oh dear. We got there anyhow but to see their faces and their joy when they saw they were over their own country was fantastic. But that was quite an exercise. Then of course we flew back some prisoners of war. Twenty four on a trip I think. And, and then it, I can't remember the name of the station we landed at but anyhow —
DE: What was that like? Flying them home?
MC: Oh, ok. They were, they were quite subdued I'd say really and obviously one was doing one’s own thing and therefore one didn't really get that much to talk to them. Again, of course they were very happy to come back home. In fact, my wife's, my brother’s wife’s brother-in-law was a prisoner of war in the RAF. Yeah. He, and when he came back we used to, he lived in Malvern and we used to go out with him, He ended up as my bank manager [laughs] which was quite useful. He studied while he was actually a prisoner of war and [pause] That must be the end I think. I must have dried up by now surely.
DE: Ok. Well, unless there’s anything else that you can think of to tell me.
MC: Well, I can't think there's anything else that would interest. Well, I mean, with John Tully in Devon. He could drink a pint of scrumpy and a pint of bitter and all the locals were waiting for his legs to fold. They didn't. And he had us lost in town. He drove us back to Dunkeswell. The next morning he would say, ‘Martin, what did we do last night [laughs] You know. Before any drink driving. But in fact, there was nothing on the roads really at that stage.
DE: No.
MC: One often wonders where they, what happened to them since and so forth. I went to one or two squadron reunions but in the end I went to them and I hardly knew anyone there. So they’ll say they were at Waterbeach or [pause] and Waterbeach of course was taken over by as an Army training place. We did have a little museum there but what's happened to that I don't know. Right. Well, I can't think.
DE: Well, I’ll switch it off. It’s just quite often what happens is I’ll press stop and then you'll say, ‘Oh, there's another thing. Thank you very much.
MC: Well, I –
DE: It's wonderful to talk to you.
MC: I don’t think it’s been much use to you but be that as it may. It’s memories disjointed and so forth.
DE: No. It's been marvellous. Thank you very much.
MC: Oh right.
DE: Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Martin Arthur Catty
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACattyMA180822
Description
An account of the resource
Martin Catty grew up in London and was evacuated to Westward Ho! with his school at the beginning of the war. He completed a short training course at Cambridge University in 1942 and joined Air Force. After training he flew 40 operations as a navigator with 514 Squadron from RAF Waterbeach. He describes how many of his operations were in daylight and using GH, so he often released the bombs. He mentions turning a Tiger Moth upside down after landing in a dust-storm during training, and how he ‘cooked’ his navigation log after he had taken control of the aircraft to give his pilot a rest. He recalls flying with another crew who smoked in the aircraft and discusses using the Elsan. Discusses some of the ground personnel and an explosion after a bomb fell from an aircraft at RAF Waterbeach in 1944. He became the navigator for the RAF Waterbeach base test crew after his tour, and after the war he flew as part of a ferry crew, taking ground crew to the Middle East, and also was an instructor for landing using the blind approach beacon. He was demobbed in October 1946 and completed a degree in engineering. Discusses his elder brother who also flew as a navigator and then flew for BOAC. He worked in management roles for The General Electric Company until he retired.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Manitoba--Brandon
Manitoba--Virden
Manitoba--Winnipeg
New Brunswick--Moncton
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Westward Ho
England--Yorkshire
Israel
United States
New York (State)--New York
North Africa
New York (State)
New Brunswick
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Devon
Manitoba
Format
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00:51:53 audio recording
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
3 Group
514 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
entertainment
evacuation
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
Manchester
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
sanitation
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/763/10760/ACunninghamAB171104.1.mp3
9f16a8efcb1e7748a3ad23a726fc2d16
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cunningham, Bruce
Argyle Bruce Cunningham
A B Cunningham
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bruce Cunningham (1920 - 2020, 424433 Royal New Zealand Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 514 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cunningham, AB
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GT: It is the 4th of November 2017 and today I’m interviewing Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham at his residence in [long beep] in Kilbirnie, Wellington, New Zealand. With me is the New Zealand Returned Servicemen’s Welfare Advisor Kaye Pointon. And Kaye has introduced me to Bruce, Bruce Chapman err Bruce Cunningham and Bruce has agreed that I can interview him today for the IBCC Digital Archives. Mr Argyle Bruce Cunningham was a pilot for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and he flew on 514 Squadron as a pilot in Bomber Command, England. So, Bruce can you please tell me a little bit about where you were born and when and therefore your age? And how you got to join the New Zealand Air Force. Please.
BC: I was, I was born in Marsden. 1920. And then I, I left school when I was thirteen and a half. I worked for a firm for four or five years and then I decided to go back to school. To short trousers and a school cap and so forth. Taken two years instead of three. When I was, the last year I was at school the school children came back from the town saying the head prefect’s name’s in the ballot. And the principal called me in and said, ‘I believe your name’s in the ballot. I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well you’re not going on any ballot. You’re sitting matriculation.’ He used to be a lieutenant colonel in the army. But just after I sat I did go into the Territorials and I spent my time digging holes in the sand and so forth. And I decided that there are other better things to do than that so I decided that I would join the, something else. I then applied. Made enquiries about the Navy. And then on second thoughts I thought no. I’d spend years being seasick so I’d better go in to the air force. So, off I went into the air force. Up at Rosewood they said, ‘We’re short in the course before. Is there anybody, would anybody like to go out of this place in half time?’ And I thought — no. I’ll leave that to the boys who’ve got all the brains. But they didn’t do it that way. They set some navigation exercises and it was decided on your results on those whether you went out of Rosewood in half time or not. And I scored, believe me it was 98.5 or something. So I was assisted to get out of the place. But I wanted to get out because I’d developed impetigo and then I used to go to the doctors. [unclear] they’d paint me with green paint. They ran out of green paint and started painting me purple. So I walked around Rosewood looking like a Red Indian looking for my lecture places which had been changed. And I was very pleased to get out of Rosewood.
GT: So, so Bruce you, joining the air force they assigned you your service number of NZ424433.
BC: Yes.
GT: Is that correct?
BC: That’s right.
GT: So what, what did you go on to do then to end up being a pilot?
BC: Yes. I went down. First of all went to Bell Brock and New Plymouth and did eighty hours there on Tiger Moths. And then I went to Wigram and got my wings in Wigram. Not in Canada. I got my wings in Wigram.
GT: Yeah. What year was that please Bruce?
BC: That would be in [pause] was it ’43? Was it? It was ’43. I didn’t wait a long time to get into the air force. I was, I knew I had to go to a war but I wasn’t particularly keen on getting into the air straight away. It got to the stage where I waited far too long. In the finish I had to ring up Wellington and say, ‘Goodness gracious me. How much longer?’ But finally I got in and I went to Wigram and got my wings. And then we had, we did the final leave and went up to Auckland and I thought I will probably get on a big boat. Walk up the stairs onto this boat that would be so big. But when I got there I got the impression that the boat was so small I walked down the thing instead of up. When we, before this, before the boat took off we were speaking to one boy on the staff there and then we were asking him about going to England by boat. And he said this is the third sister ship. The name was the Empire Grace, I think. And he said, ‘This is the third sister ship.’ And we said, ‘What about the other ships?’ ‘Well, they all went on their third trip. They were sunk.’ And I was, so of course someone asked the question, ‘What trip is this?’ Of course the answer was, ‘This is the third trip.’ [laughs] Well, as the lights of Auckland disappeared I thought well that’s the last you’ll see of her [laughs] But first of all we didn’t go straight to Panama. We went south. Went down the Southern Ocean and that. It had the largest consignment of cheese that had ever left New Zealand. And they’d built some bunks in it and took about fifteen air force crew over then. But then, and then we went to Panama and we had leave on Panama and we went into town. Pitch black. 10 o’clock the lights turned on all over the town and then to it. That was a big night in Panama for everybody. A strange place.
GT: So, how long did it take you to sail to England then Bruce? How long did it take you to get there?
BC: From memory I think it must have taken about five weeks. I can’t recall back then. I remember going across the Atlantic. We, we were on our own. We weren’t escorted. We got nearer to England and we had to do drills and all sorts of things. Quite a long way. German aeroplanes coming out to bomb us. We went out over the top of Ireland and down. Right down to Avonmouth where we finally disembarked.
GT: Was that Southampton?
BC: Avonmouth. Yeah.
GT: Ok.
BC: Yeah. Avonmouth.
GT: So once you got to England then where did they send you? What, what OTU and bases did you go to?
BC: Well, we went to, New Zealand troops in those days were sent to Bournemouth. It was very good at Bournemouth. But later on they decided to send us to Brighton which wasn’t so good. But Bournemouth was a lovely place. Also, my first introduction to Bournemouth was on Sunday afternoon a Focke Wulf came over from Germany and blasted the place. Sunday afternoon. And we were crouching down on the floor and I thought afterwards what’s the good of that? I remember they bombed a, a Bobbies café and a woman who used to watch us drilling every morning she stopped a bullet from that trip. They came over very low level and frightened everybody. Then I went to several stations flying Oxfords at that. And then after we finished Oxfords we then went on to Wellingtons. Flying Wellington. Wellington 1Cs.
GT: What station was that at Bruce? Can you remember?
BC: That was at OTU at Westcott. And to me I always look back and think that station was more, it was more dangerous being there than being on operations. The aeroplanes used to remind me of old, old rental car. If you got there you were lucky. The chance of getting there without a breakdown were pretty remote. And, and I had the diciest do ever in my life was at Westcott. And how I survived I’ll never know. But it is, it was a very dicey business Westcott. If you got out of Westcott there was a fair show you’d live. But most of New Zealanders must have gone through Westcott. Bomber Command. 11 OTU. And then I left that station with good marks, but boy was I ever lucky. I learned to listen. Never be first off in training. Never, never do that again. Never be first off. That’s because leave it for someone else to do the finding out. I took off and I wasn’t far up in the air before an aeroplane in the [pause] flew over the top of us and ruined all our radio equipment including the artificial horizon at night time. And then, and I couldn’t see the ‘drome. That was, we should never have taken off. So I had to do what I thought was a circuit. No artificial horizon. All that missing. Did a circuit and land only to find the runway was over there. So I do an overshoot. In those aeroplanes the 1C’s you didn’t do an overshoot in the middle of the day let alone at midnight. Green as the grass surviving then. So do another circuit. Just one. The runway’s over there. So I kept on doing these circuits. That’s right. I found out later on that they could hear me but I couldn’t hear them or the other way around. Something right. So they turned on lights to tell me where the front of the runway was. After all the lights all they did was lit up the air but I’ve forgotten the colour that I could see. And I, somehow or other made a landing. When I landed the official procedure was to ring up and say you’d landed. The whole damn ‘drome knew I’d landed but the RAF says you ring up and say you’ve landed. That’s what you did. So I picked up to ring up but my tongue wouldn’t work. My tongue wouldn’t work [laughs] and boy was I lucky to get down. But everybody else was sitting down there waiting for me to land. And that’s when I learned never be first off in future. Someone else had got to find out what the weather was like. But it wasn’t made any better by someone flying over the top of me ruining all my radio and [pause] and radio, and. I was lucky to get out of Westcott alive. After that I, they put me sent me off to fly Stirlings and Stirlings were very big and you were about twenty feet up in the air. And when you started to fly that you were never knew whether you were two feet above the ground or two feet under.
GT: So, so Bruce, was it at Westcott you formed up with your crew? Did you get crewed?
BC: At Westcott we signed up with five of them and subsequently we got the other two. But it was amazing you should mention that because how you got crewed up was a great way. It worked for some reason or other. It’s a thing that you wouldn’t want to do a second time. Like getting married. You’re just shoved into a room and something happened made you. And here you see I picked on a fellow who finished up boss or second boss of [unclear] of Great Britain. You could drop a bomb behind him and he wouldn’t shake. He was a wonderful fellow.
GT: Can you tell us their names please?
BC: Eh?
GT: Can you tell us their names?
BC: Yes. I could.
[pause]
GT: Bruce is opening his very well-worn diary. It’s an awesome piece of history.
BC: Incidentally, I drew that myself. I couldn’t do that now. The navigator was Bob Ramsay. The bomb aimer was Brailsford. Reg Brailsford. Radio operator Sergeant Stone. The rear gunner Sergeant Roberts and the mid-upper gunner Fred Brown. And then the engineer would have been [pause] But Roberts was a, he swore that we were shot down by another Lancaster. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was just reading before you came in here how I went over to Wales after I came back from the war and Taff was in the same pew in the church that we’d had sat in before I went missing. And then he and his family told me that he wouldn’t budge. Budge from that.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
KP: The war —
GT: Ok.
KP: Again.
GT: Right. I’ve just had to turn that off. That was Bruce’s daughter just ringing on the phone.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so, Bruce if, if we could —
BC: Go back to —
GT: If we could just go back to the point where —
BC: Fair enough.
GT: Now, you’ve just named your crew and I need to point out that Bruce has read all the names in his diary on pencil without glasses. So for a ninety six, ninety seven year old man that’s pretty awesome that you’re doing that without your, without any reading glasses. So, so Bruce, now you moved on to your Stirlings. Who else did you pick up for your Stirling crew? And where did you fly and learn to fly the Stirlings?
BC: I picked up the crew and joined up with the mid-upper gunner and the engineer, at [pause] I’ll tell, I’ll tell you later. It wasn’t the engineer that we were shot down with. That, our own engineer was injured.
GT: So you learned to fly the Stirling. What station were you at for that?
BC: I can’t remember. Stradishall was it?
GT: Stradishall. Could have done. Yeah. Ok.
BC: It’ll come to me.
GT: And that was, that was a Heavy Conversion Unit.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Do you remember the number of the HCU? 1685 maybe?
BC: I can get it if you want it.
GT: Alright. Yeah. Well, we can, we can add that in later on. That’s fair. So how long did you spend on Stirlings? And was it then you were sent to a Lancaster squadron was it?
BC: Yeah. When I was, they were going to, they were going to send us to 75 but then they changed their minds and sent us to 514 and we went on to Stirlings. Mark 2s. On to Mark 2 Lancasters. And they were a wonderful thing to change there. It reminded me of an old Vauxhall motor car. Mass produced but wonderful. And I was flying again, and I seemed to recall I went, the bloke said to me, ‘Well, you can go solo now.’ And I said, ‘I think I’d like one more circuit.’ And he said, ‘Ok,’ but even after that I think I was first off with all the [unclear] I took to those. They were good. They were very good indeed.
GT: So, you, you flew Lancaster Mark 2s. Did you ever fly a Merlin powered Lancaster?
BC: No. No. No. But when I got back to England after the war they were on Merlins. They built three hundred Hercules motored Mark 2 and it was the number three hundredth that we got out of.
GT: So, now how many sorties did you manage at 514? How long were you on 514?
BC: Oh, I was only there for a couple of months at that and I did about ten or a dozen at that. But I got about three weeks before the invasion we were sent over to France and Belgium and Holland to smash up all the railway yards and so forth.
GT: So, this was about May. June.
BC: Just before the invasion.
GT: 1944. Yeah.
BC: And that’s when I got caught.
GT: So what base were you at? What station were you at?
BC: Waterbeach.
GT: Waterbeach on 514.
BC: Yeah. Just out of Cambridge.
GT: Ok.
BC: Peacetime ‘drome and we [unclear].
GT: And, and you got to your twelfth or thirteenth operation.
BC: About ten or a dozen. I can’t remember. A couple of boomerangs. I can remember one boomerang. We got a half way across the North Sea. Sparks were coming out of the motor. And that’s not nice being up there in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. That was most annoying to have that. Another time we hadn’t been going long before we were sent in immediately after the Pathfinders which I thought was very good for a green crew. I was sat in the aeroplane, revving it up and a great big magneto drop. And I tried all I could do to clear that magneto run but I couldn’t do it. So I had to turn the motors off and I called up. You weren’t allowed to speak just before you took off because they knew you were, people were listening to you in Germany. Call up, ‘M-Mother, engineer,’ and out came a squadron leader, ‘Start the motors up. You pilots are all the same.’ So [laughs] so started the motors up and he started to run the motors up. And he ran and he ran and he ran and my engineer was telling him the cylinder head temperatures were way above what it should be. And he kept on trying to clear this magneto drop and at first couldn’t do it at all. He had to turn the motors off. But he never apologised. Nowadays, of course you’d, you’d get stuck in to him but in those days you couldn’t start to, telling a squadron leader what to do or you’d be on the outer for some time.
GT: So what rank were you at Waterbeach?
BC: I was a, I was a, when that happened I was probably a flight sergeant. And you didn’t, you didn’t tell the squadron leader because — especially an English one.
GT: So on the sorties you did they were all night operations.
BC: Every one. Yeah.
GT: Every one. And did you manage to engage any night fighters? Do any corkscrewing? That kind of stuff.
BC: No. No. No. We didn’t. On the night we were shot down we were just left the target and then something came through the mid-upper. The, the starboard inner. If I had trouble with the aeroplane it was always the starboard inner. Always. And the starboard inner ran a lot of the things all over the aeroplane. That’s where the source of power came from. And I can remember the tracer bullets coming through like that. Power over the ground. And when I became a prisoner of war the interrogator was trying to find out all sort of things from me. He said, ‘You were shot down by flak.’ Now, I wasn’t shot down by flak. I was shot down by something in the air. And Taffy reckoned it was another, another Lancaster but over the years I’ve seen all sorts of reasons why I was shot down. I was shot down by — somebody claimed me, flying a Focke Wulf. Another one claimed me, flying I think it was a 109. And somebody else claimed me. It was the old story. Someone was trying to jack up their shooting downs and they were all claiming me.
GT: Enemy kills. So, so you saw tracer coming through your aircraft.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Straight and level. Or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Horizontal and level.
BC: Yeah. It come from the back. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. So could it have been machine guns or cannons?
BC: Yeah. It couldn’t have been anything from the ground.
GT: Ok. But the cannons were a lot larger mass —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Of incendiary coming through. Whereas the bullets, 303s in calibre are smaller.
BC: The poor, the poor rear gunner. He he he was one of three who got home. Managed to get home. And he went on operations again. First operation with a pilot called Gilchrist. Flight Sergeant Gilchrist. Blown to smithereens. And that —
KP: It’s ok [pause] It’s alright. Keep talking. Glen just went to answer the door.
BC: Who was that? Who was that? Yeah. He was blown to smithereens. Do you know what it was? Bombs from a Lancaster up above him. Poor old chap. He was coming out to live in New Zealand after the war. But he, he used to be a, well he was an orphan. And the week before, the Sunday before he was shot down I was over Wales. I went to this small church in Blaenau Ffestiniog. And I said to Taffy after the service, ‘Taffy, that preacher was talking about you and me in your lingo. What was he saying?’ He said. ‘Yeah, he was.’ Yeah.
GT: Bruce, can you describe the night you were shot down then? That was about your twelfth. On your twelfth operation thereabouts you were saying. So, how? And you described that you were shot down possibly by enemy aircraft. More than likely. So, so what happened then? Did the crew bale out? Run us through what happened.
BC: They, I — the thing was on fire and the fire was spreading. I asked the engineer to push the graviner switch in. I’m not sure what happened after that. I think he, he was a bit worried that after the war too he was in England. He was an Englishman. He went up to Lincoln and sat in the aircraft to try and recall had happened on the night. He was very worried about it. And I can remember a friend of mine connected with gliding in England and he wrote and said, “I see your name in the “Aeroplane” or “Flypast” or something in England. And this is what it said — ”. And I said, ‘Well, that’s wrong. That’s not true.’ My mid-upper gunner in Adelaide, he read it too. He said, ‘I’m not putting up with that.’ So he started looking for him in Adelaide. That took him a day. He found this bloke. He said, ‘You’d better retract that mate. It’s not good what you said in that.’ But then —
GT: So the graviner you mentioned there. The graviner switches.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: The graviners were the fire extinguishers. Is that right?
BC: I don’t know what happened about that. What he did about the graviner switches but on one trip we went to Karlsruhe. We went to the briefing and, you know sort of from memory the Met man waved his hand from Spain to Sweden and said, ‘There’s a cold front there. It’ll be gone when you get there.’ Of course the damn cold thing wasn’t gone at all. There was a cold front as soon as we got into France and we spent most of the time flying to Karlsruhe in, in, in ice and so forth. I see on that something happened a few minutes ago when there was no stuff on the wings to stop the icing. And we were flying in pitch black and then bang. What had happened is ice came off the propeller through the Perspex and laid the engineer out. He got up to have a look around and so help me another lot came through and hit him and he finished up in hospital. They thought he was going to lose his sight, but he didn’t lose his sight. He certainly wasn’t a POW either. He got out. We got another engineer who was a, who was a, whose pilot was in hospital. I think they shifted him from ‘drome to ‘drome and they came cropper on a motorbike and the pilot finished up in hospital. But then —
GT: So, when, when you gave the order to bale out once the aircraft was on fire.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Was that how it worked?
BC: How I got out I don’t know because I said to the engineer, put my parachute, ‘Get my parachute off the ground.’ It annoyed me. The RAF did something I didn’t like. They took pilot type parachutes off us. ‘Chutes that you sat on. And gave you an observer type which you put down on the floor behind the seat. Now, that’s not good enough. But I had to say to this engineer, ‘Get me my parachute.’ So, he gets the parachute and plops it down on my knee. I said, ‘That’s no good. Put it on hooks will you.’ I’ve got, all the trims for the aeroplane are gone. And you’re holding a Lancaster there with no trim. You’ve got a problem. Your feet hard down and you’re not holding the stick like, you’re holding the stick like, like — the minute you took your hand off the aeroplane started to turn over.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now, I knew, I knew that blokes that were near me had got out but I wasn’t sure about the two at the back. And I spent some time sitting there ringing them up saying, ‘Are you there? Can you hear me?’ They never did answer. One of them afterwards, I said to him after the war. ‘You didn’t tell me you were going. I sat here for some time in a burning aeroplane while you didn’t tell me.’ ‘Oh yes I did.’ I didn’t, no you didn’t [laughs] But he, he got hit by the tail plane when he was getting out so he had that then. And of course then after after they’d all gone there was one hook on this parachute I had to put on myself and I couldn’t spare any hand. I had to put the thing on otherwise the parachute wouldn’t work. And of course the minute I get out of the seat the aeroplane started to roll over. Now, to get out I had to virtually dive underneath the dashboard. There’s a small hole which is not as, everybody acknowledged it wasn’t big enough. Now, to get through that hole and turn the aeroplane at 1 o’clock in the morning you’re pretty lucky to get out. I think it was a jolly good dive, never mind that.
GT: So you got out the hatch in the nose. In the floor of the aircraft.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I got down a very stupid thought passed my mind and people can’t understand how it did but I didn’t understand it either and I was on the roof of this place, two storied roof looking up. At that stage we weren’t flying high. Five, six, seven or eight thousand feet only. And I could see the first flying home and I said to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing here when all those blokes are going home for eggs and bacon?’ And down the west coast of New Zealand they seem to enjoy that crack.
GT: Yeah. Did you lose many when you were on the squadron? Any. Many aircraft?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Had you lost quite a few as a squadron?
BC: No. All go on time.
GT: So, when, when you managed to get out of the aircraft how did you pull your parachute? You had a rip cord. A handle.
BC: A ripcord. Yeah.
GT: You managed to find —
BC: I can remember a friend of mine. I went all through the air force with him and then he got crewed up and then he went on his second dickie. You know what a second dickie is?
GT: I know but please tell people.
BC: He, he went with an experienced crew and the whole lot of them killed on the first trip. That, that was rather shaking. Ken Drummond from Lower Hutt. But then his crew crewed up with another Englishman who wanted his crew to salute him every day. And Ken, Ken’s navigator was a the fellow with some Maori blood in him and he took this pilot aside and sort of put him right. But they finished a tour. They were very lucky. They finished a tour. Yeah.
GT: Fascinating. Ok. So you managed to get your parachute open. And did you manage to steer yourself anywhere? Could you see where you were going to land?
BC: No.
GT: Or was it just pot luck that you ended up on top of a house?
BC: It was completely black. So I suppose you couldn’t see where you were landing that was probably a good thing. But I sat on the top of this roof. It was a small building with a very, very steep roof and the parachute was caught over a chimney otherwise I might have slid off the roof. And I heard a story after, after the war that I wouldn’t be, I refused to come down off the roof. Where they got that story I’m daft if I know that. But what would I want to refuse for? But finally they got me down me down through a trap door in the roof. Two stories up. And so help me there was a, oh must have been at least a dozen or eighteen young Germans and one rope. I used my French for the first time in my life. The only time I ever used my French. I wanted to find out had the aeroplane landed on houses or in the fields. I can remember that much French. I found out the aeroplane had landed in fields. That’s how I knew that I hadn’t killed anybody.
GT: So, where, where did you crash and land please?
BC: Where did I crash? I landed at a place called Rixensart at about sou’ southeast of Brussels. I always thought it was a pub I’d landed on. And I thought it was quite strange that I should land on a pub and be a teetotaller [laughs] Yeah. But it wasn’t a pub. It was a café. And I went back in 1996 to collect my beer. But only to find out the place is now a bank and the Brussels newspaper thought that was highly funny. That I came back to collect and I couldn’t [laughs]
GT: So, the Germans immediately took you as a prisoner of war.
BC: Yeah.
GT: What happened then?
BC: I became a prisoner of war and I was — the next thing I went to Frankfurt for interrogation. And I was there for several days. I don’t know. It might have been a week. And they questioned you on — they were able to tell me more about my squadron than I ever knew myself. I learned a lot from that bloke. And he surprised. He threw, he threw across the table a photograph of a Mosquito aeroplane and he said, ‘See that aeroplane?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I flew that yesterday.’ And I said, ‘Yeah?’ ‘Yeah. What a wonderful aeroplane,’ he said, ‘Pity you can’t make more of them.’ I must have said, ‘Can’t we make more of them?’ He said, ‘No. They’re made of wood.’ And then I suppose he was a, he might have been a pilot who was resting or something and that’s they were giving him a job while he was resting. But I can remember seeing marks on the wall that people had made in there with thumbnail and fingernail. And that was the number of days they’d spent there before they got out. I can remember being on the Frankfurt Railway Station. There was a German corporal looking after about a half a dozen of us. And while we were on the station there was an air raid. And of course everybody in Frankfurt decided they’d get in to the railway station to be safe. And of course the crowd got bigger and bigger and it got more closer and closer to us. And this poor little German corporal he was dead scared that the public might tear us apart and he’d be responsible. I can remember him flapping good and hard at that. He might have been in trouble but then after we left there we were put in these sort of cattle trucks and then began the long, long trip across. Across Germany to, to Sagan. Which now is back in Polish hands. But, but it was a long, long trip and it was terrible. Terrible. I suppose we were lucky.
GT: You, you were interviewed by the Luftwaffe or by the Nazis? Or Gestapo.
BC: The Luftwaffe. Yeah.
GT: You think that was a lucky —
BC: When, when I — on my first trip the squadron said to me, the squadron commander said, ‘We’re going to Berlin tonight. If you don’t want to go just say so. No questions will be asked if you say no, that you don’t want to go.’ But that. Who? Who would want to, not want to go he said. Off we go to Berlin. And I can remember the next morning on the newspapers in England. Big headline, “RAF fools German defences.” The RAF didn’t know where it was that night. They sent out winds which were wrong. Someone going towards Berlin had to change and they, they didn’t fully accept the changes. They made some sort of amendment. And everybody of course got lost. And they went over Berlin. And then if you read in the book, “The Great Escape,” you’ll find they, they held up escaping because there was a raid on Berlin. That was my first trip. The worst Berlin trip during the whole of the war. Seventy three aeroplanes missing. So we all come back and we came back, slap bang in to the Ruhr and one of my crew said, ‘There’s more searchlights here than Berlin.’ Navigator said, ‘Oh, there’s darkness in between a couple of them.’ I said, ‘Mr Navigator, we’re flying, changing course. We’re flying due north.’ I flew due north whatever it was. And then turned west. We find out the next day some came out south of the Ruhr. And they didn’t know where they were that night. The winds got them all mucked up that was the last big trip they did on Berlin. They didn’t do any more. They couldn’t afford to lose, lose men like that. Seven in each aeroplane and seventy three aeroplanes missing. Although subsequently and I’ll always remember standing on the railway station at Waterbeach and, and I didn’t know at the time but that night they, they went to Nuremberg. And they lost ninety three in the air. That was the biggest loss of the war. I went on leave that morning otherwise I might have been there.
GT: So that would have been July 1944.
BC: That was at — no. That was before May. I went missing on the 11th of May. That was before then.
GT: Right. And the targets that you flew for what were they? Was it cities? Oil refineries?
BC: No. They were mostly cities. At Cologne and then Berlin. Karlsruhe. Just before the invasion there were, there were two or three or four stockyards. Messing up a stockyard. After we were shot down they were doing daylight raids. They were, they were mighty costly too. Very costly. But I don’t know, at night time you just flew an aeroplane. You didn’t know what was around you. You couldn’t see. You might find, shake a bit and that was someone flying across your nose. You could have hit him. You wouldn’t know. In the daytime you must have been very frightened seeing people get trapped. Night time you couldn’t care because you didn’t know. But there must have been quite a few accidents in the air. People hitting each other. So.
GT: What was your standard bomb loads? Did you have incendiaries or the high explosive. Five hundred pounders? Cookies? What was your standard bomb load you took?
BC: My first trip was an eight thousand pounder. Fancy sending a green man like me with an eight thousand pounder. I took an eight thousand pounder at another aerodrome too. Used to take off with about six tons. And people say that Bomber Command didn’t do much of a job during the war but you try following six hundred people over a city. Each aeroplane’s got six tons. That’s three thousand tons of bombs on a flight. That must make some difference eh? Night after night. On my second dickie trip and that, that’s what’s on there. Always reminded me. That photo there that’s what Stuttgart looked like. It was more of a second dickie trip. They decided to go to Stuttgart and the previous losses was three aeroplanes so everybody decided it was about time they did an operation. The last time was only three. That night it was thirty two. And that was like daylight that night and that always reminds me of it.
GT: Now, your dickie trips. Did you get to know the captain and the crew very well or were you just told to stand there, shut up and don’t touch anything?
BC: Oh, the second dickie. Funny you should mention that. I’m looking around. Before we took off I’m looking around the aeroplane. Doing a sort of inspection. Casual inspection. And I see the rear gunner with an empty bottle of beer. I said, ‘What the hell is going on here mate?’ He said, ‘Oh for Lords sake don’t tell the captain.’ He said, ‘We drop one over the target.’ He said, ‘They make a terrible noise when they’re going through the air.’ But that, there’s a photo over there there’s one, there’s a book called Strike and, Strike and Sure, something like that.
GT: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll have a look at that later on.
BC: At the end. Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Now that fella’s grandfather was a rear gunner on that aeroplane which I flew.
GT: Ok.
BC: That —
GT: Yeah.
BC: That fellow who wrote that book on 514 Squadron. His grandfather was killed on an aeroplane. That one over there. Yeah.
GT: What was the side code numbers of your aircraft? Do you remember the numbers of your aircraft?
BC: Yeah. I’ve got them wrote out. JI something. 819 was one of them. And that. But I always had trouble with that, with the starboard inner. I mean one aeroplane we came home with had [pause] I was very fortunate when I got home. I was green, you know, a young pilot. Always was, the big shots won’t like my coming home early. I used to say, ‘If you’re only over the North Sea and you’ve got trouble go back home and you’ll come back tomorrow night. But if you go ahead you know you could kill yourself.’ But we got quite worried about sometimes about boomerang. But in that particular case, the flight commander’s aeroplane and they had to take the motor out. Yeah. Yeah. That pleased me [laughs]
GT: Just showed that —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Going back was the best option in this case. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Definitely. So once you were a POW how, what happened then? You ended up in Sagan. Did you have a POW number assigned?
BC: Yeah. 5150 — my POW. I remember that number. When you got to the POW camp of course you had to be checked over. You might have been a ring-in. And that happened occasionally. Yeah. That’s true. I didn’t, I don’t think that happened in our camp but that did happen. And —
GT: So you’re meaning that there was a Nazi infiltrator. That they planted people in.
BC: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Wow. And they called them ring-ins.
BC: Eh?
GT: Did they call them ring-ins?
BC: No. I called them that. I was able to tell them about a bloke there who was on the squadron before. Before I got shot down. He was able to confirm that I was quite legitimate. But, but in that POW camp of course you, you had guards inside the camp and out and, and bringing their beautiful Alsatian dogs. But the goons were interesting people. The guards would come into the camp. I remember a fella coming into camp once and he’d lost his ticket to get out. Word went around, ‘If you’ve got his ticket will you bring it to the gate so he can get out’ [laughs]. Everybody had to take, wait a damned long time before they handed that in [laughs] That’s that. That’s oh, that, yeah up to all sorts of mischief when you were a POW. They were underneath you. Underneath the floor checking up on you and crawling out on the [unclear] and they call you out to check where the radios were. We had, they had one fella who was going to, he was in our room actually. I don’t know where he was going to escape from but he was going to. He had an escape all jacked up. But I think it was called off in the finish because of some reason or other. But he was going to go down the road and steal an aeroplane. Yeah. There was, next, next door to the prisoner of war camp there was a big paddock. I’m not sure whether they used that for sport or not but I do recall a very small Welsh pilot who was a, he was a lawyer. And he went into this paddock and picked up a shovel and and a handful of wood and an old hat and decided walk out. Unfortunately [laughs] unfortunately they got him before he got very far. And I’ll never forget watching Wing Commander Tuck. As they were walking this bloke out he was dropping all the escape gear on the ground and Wing Commander Tuck was picking it up [laughs] Yeah.
GT: So Bruce, you were mentioning a Wing Commander Tuck. So, as we were talking earlier you had some very famous aircrew with you in Sagan. So, can you tell us a little about the people that were with you? And in this case Wing Commander Stanford Tuck.
BC: Wing Commander Tuck. He was a prisoner of war there and he, he — we were in a section called Tuck’s Mansions which were infected with those what do you call them? Bedbugs. And you go to bed at night, wake up in the mornings and your back was all bloody. And they tried many times to get rid of these roaches but they were, they had long lives these roaches. Yeah. There was one fellow in there they reckon at one stage he he flew an aeroplane up the streets of Berlin. I don’t know whether it was up the streets or not but I’ve a feeling he was pretty low. He was a, he was a [pause] At the prisoner of war camp I had a good record for bowling and cricket and then I quite often tell people that I had a very good record for bowling and cricket. They said, ‘Oh yeah. You must have been amongst the Sunday afternoon players.’ And I said I don’t think the Captain of Western Australia would like to be called that [laughs] The blokes from the West Indies. They wouldn’t like to be called that. We had, in my room we had a book. A line book. If you shot a line it got, it got put into the line book. Tuck was in the room one day and he made the comment, ‘All my flight commanders have become group captains and so forth since I was shot down,’ into the line book. And another squadron leader was shooting the line that he said, ‘So I pulled up, I pulled up over the hill and the flak was so and so thick you could have walked on it.’ That’s that.
GT: So Stanford Tuck was stuck down in Europe.
BC: I think he was. Yeah.
GT: Ok. And he ended up in your, in the same POW camp was it? Did he become the POW senior commander or was that someone else?
BC: No. There was a group captain there with a, a little fella with a big moustache. A groupie. And he was, he was, he was the commander. There were, there were lots of wingcos in there. It was a camp, a compound that was started off they got the ringleaders of the escape and shot them to [unclear] . That was the focus of the [unclear] compound. After that it was prisoners from recent trips and of course they were Nuremberg and Leipzig and Berlin. They were pretty heavy losses so the, you know blokes who were prisoners of war quite often didn’t have very many operations. It wasn’t their fault. I can remember one night around about 12 o’clock at night the word came out we were going to be shifted out of the camp. So, we had to, we had to move out. And that was the worst winter in Germany for eighty years. Snow outside. Marching. We marched in the snow. And then it wasn’t very pleasant at all. At the — I can remember one, one stop at, my friend I was with, a boy from Eton he could speak any old language at all. He talked to some people who lived in Germany and we got a damned good meal. I’ll always remember. Kept going back to the great big room where we were housed. It was dark and we had to crawl across all these bodies to get to where we should have been and put our knees in people’s noses, and all sorts. Frightening thought. But then we, we got out. Finally got up to a place called [pause] sou’ southwest of Berlin. A very big camp and they shifted us out of [unclear] or Sagan because they didn’t, they didn’t want the Russians to get us. Otherwise there might be, might be thousands of aircrew available to, you know, send back to England to fly again. So they didn’t want the Russians to get us. So that’s why they marched us away. But they couldn’t stop. Once we got to up south of Berlin. Couldn’t stop it. The Russians came. And they became our captors. And the Yankie, the Yanks used to send up trucks every day to cart us away. The Russians wouldn’t let them go. Wouldn’t let them go away. So they wanted, they said, ‘We’ll take the wounded and sick away.’ The Russians wouldn’t allow that either. So, I don’t know what the Russians had in mind at all but they wouldn’t let, they wouldn’t let the Yanks take us away. It was at that stage that I said to Guy one day, ‘I’ve had this place. I’m getting out of it.’ That’s when it all started again. But we got caught. Yeah. I always remember finally we got to the, we got a correspondent in a jeep picked us up. Guy and I. After we escaped.
GT: I’m sorry. Guy who?
BC: Guy Pease. And he picked, the correspondent picked us up in a jeep and he took us west to a, to a, to some trucks manned by negro drivers who then decided to take us west. And we got to the old brew hut only to find the bridge was manned by Russians who said, ‘Take them back, boy. You’re not crossing here.’ So these negro drivers said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.’ So they turned around to go further north to find another bridge — manned by Russians. Finally get a bridge that was manned by Yanks and we got across. And I’ll always remember those front line American troops putting chewing gum and toothbrushes in to my, our pocket. And you know for years later I wouldn’t have a word said against the Americans at all. Front line troops doing that. That’s that. Yes.
GT: Many of those Americans had liberated many of those camps and must have seen some awful sights so obviously they had great compassion for you and their own boys too. They had a lot of people in POW camps themselves didn’t they? The Americans.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, they, they managed to get you across into allied lines. How did you get back to England? And when was that?
BC: That was in [pause] that must have been in May. And we were flown back from Brussels. I got flown back in a Dakota. But my rear, my mid-upper gunner he was a flight sergeant from another camp. He got to Brussels before me apparently and he, so help me got flown back by a 514 pilot. 514 aeroplane. Yeah. That’s that.
GT: So, we must, must go back then and ask you about your crew. So all your crew managed to bale out. That’s seven members.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did they all survive the war and were they made POW or did they evade?
BC: Three of them. Three of them got back to England. The bomb aimer, the rear gunner and a radio operator. Apparently the radio operator got caught. He was two or three feet away from being caught, and he doesn’t know how he got away with it but he got home. Another two they were on the loose for six weeks before they got turned in by infiltrators. There was a group who helped prisoners of war get back but that group got infiltrated by somebody and he turned the whole damned lot in. And I think he left, he left that, what — he left somewhere but he came back. He came back and he worked in a pub in Paris. And some Yank spotted him and I think finally they got him and killed him in a chuck run. I’ve got a note of it somewhere. His name. He had several aliases. But that, but that was a bit frightening anyway to be turned in. And my navigator the Gestapo got him at night time. Very difficult if you’re — you know kids can give the giveaway you know. Get to school at that, ‘Oh we’ve got a man at home,’ and so forth. It could have been worse I suppose. When I was in Frankfurt the Germans made a comment that there are so many people on the roofs in the air force that so many people on the roofs they weren’t able to stop the population taking a, you know a pitchfork to people who landed. I suppose that happened occasionally. But in the, in the front of this book here I’ve got a note of the, the service when that, all those people were killed. Do you remember that Great Escape? Hitler said they were all to be shot. Somehow or other somebody else said half of them will be shot. At the service, I’ve got a note of the service there. Incidentally, a few years later, a few years ago I read some of that to the Girls Guides at the RSA laying of poppies at Karori. I read some of that. I don’t know. I don’t know what year it was but I’ve got a note of it here.
GT: Did you, did you know any of those prisoners of war that escaped and then were shot?
BC: No. No.
GT: You didn’t. Right.
BC: No. I didn’t know.
GT: So, when you managed to get back to England then when you flew back to England where did you land and what did they do? Did they —
BC: I can’t remember where we landed.
GT: Did they medically check you and then —
BC: I think they did. Yeah. We weren’t very, we weren’t in very good health but on the boat coming back it was a big boat. We, I think we won the tug of war on the boat and it always amazed me how underfed people like us could beat the rest of them. We didn’t cheat [laughs]
GT: And that was only a few months after the war finished. You managed to get a boat back to New Zealand.
BC: That’s right. Yeah. 1980 went to the Girl Guides. 1980.
GT: Wow. Yeah.
BC: Forty years ago.
GT: Goodness me.
BC: But you’d be very interested to read some of the comments from that.
GT: Thank you. I will do. Yeah. So, from, from that time when did you arrive back to New Zealand? Was it mid 1945? Something like that?
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Yeah. And the —
BC: On the way back I think the Japanese tossed it in. I was on the boat when they tossed it in, I think.
GT: Ok. You were very lucky then.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Did you stay in the New Zealand Air Force or did you keep flying?
BC: No. I I got out. They asked me in Brussels why I didn’t stay in the air force and I made a comment and after I made it I was very frightened it would get back to my friends in the New Zealand. They said, ‘Why didn’t you stay in the air force?’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a taxi driver all my life.’ If that gets back to my friend in New Zealand. Of course I had a lot to do in aviation after the war.
GT: So then please tell us about that because once you arrived back did you take up a new trade? Did you carry on flying? What? Please tell us what you did there Bruce.
BC: When I came home from the war I [laughs] When I came home from the war I went to the powers that be and I said, ‘I want a bursary to go to university.’ They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Commerce.’ They said, ‘There’s no bursaries for Commerce.’ It was in the rehab, opposite, upstairs opposite [unclear] and they said there’s no. I said, ‘I’m not interested in what you say. I want a bursary to go back. The war has ruined my life. I went back to school and I didn’t go back for nothing. I want a bursary.’ They said, ‘You’re not having it.’ I said, ‘I think you might be wrong mate,’ and I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ And I can remember saying, the fella said to me, ‘The lecture’s at night. What would you do in the daytime? Go around Oriental Bay?’ And I said to him, ‘You say that again and see what happens then.’ I pestered. In the finish the pushed me out. They said, ‘You’ve got a bursary for one year only.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ I forgot who it was who helped me get that. A bloke. Turner I think. I’ve forgotten who. In the end I went back and I said, ‘Now, I want a bursary to go to university next year.’ They said, ‘You’ve had one for a year. You were told for one year only. You’re not having another one.’ I said, ‘Who’s above you in this joint?’ So [laughs] so, finally I enrolled at the university and I went down. By this stage I’d have got to top man in New Zealand. A fellow called Colonel Barrington. A little fellow. And thank goodness for him. He was the top man. We started [laughs] we were swearing at each other. And then, and then I said, ‘I want a bursary. I’m not clever but I’m pig headed enough to want to get somewhere.’ And then finally he said to me, ‘Ring me back at 4 o’clock. What are you doing now?’ I said, ‘I’m up, my books are on the table in the library right now. Up at the university.’ ‘Ring me at 4 o’clock.’ So he gave me a bursary for a second year. And, and I found out that’s not the way to study. It’s not the way to study. Doing a three year course in two years is no way to. It’s wrong. Fundamentally wrong. It’s very wrong. You shouldn’t do that. But I finally got my accounting work from somebody. Then went on my own. And I spent a lot of my time on aviation. I was at the aero club and I was at the aero club for, I don’t know, sixteen years. And then and then the Royal New Zealand I was up for the whole of New Zealand. And then gliding for forty five years. New Zealand Secretary of Gliding for forty five years and I’d the only aerial topdressing company in Wellington. I was the secretary of that. I used to go up to Martinborough, every month for a director’s meeting with that John Rutherford whose family owned the dominion. John with his great big moustache, his Benz car. When you closed the door you thought you were closing a strongroom door.
GT: Wow. So, so for gliding became your passion in the end. Forty. Forty five years.
BC: Captain of the secretaries. Yeah. I had another secretaryship. Sixty years. My daughter said to me one night, ‘Come into town. We’re going to have a meal.’ That happened quite often. But they put one across me. When I got into this, this restaurant I knew everybody there. It was a party for me. To give me a New Zealand life membership of the painters. The only one ever given to a bloke who’s not been on the New Zealand Executive. I got life membership with the painters after sixty years secretaryship. That’s a long time.
GT: So you were a painter and paper hanger. Or —
BC: No. I was the secretary of it.
GT: Just became the secretary of it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Wow. Without even being in the industries per se.
BC: That’s right. I was a, I was secretary of Wellington for six years. I was a life member of Wellington and I’m a life member of the New Zealand too. In fact when I got that life membership that was my eighth. I’ve got eight of them.
GT: Fabulous.
BC: I had about forty years in the motion picture industry too. I was the auditor of the motion pictures, the cinemas for New Zealand. And then I became a secretary. And I was the secretary of the — and I used to run all the conferences up at Rotorua and Hamilton.
GT: So, this is a direct result of you pushing to get your bursaries and you did a degree in Commerce.
BC: Yeah.
GT: This is a direct result of all of that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I got a, I got a BComm and then I got my accountancy and then they decided that the Institute of Secretaries, there was a, I thought I might as well become, get my secretarial exam too. And they said if you sit this exam and pass it by the New Zealand you are automatically become a chartered secretary of England. So, we sat this, we sat this exam for, for the secretarial and I remember sitting in a church hall in town. I sat this exam and got it all done in about nine hours flat. Three three hours papers. Everybody, everyone was there to get in the back door. And I got home and I found out that one question I got all the, I made the list correct but I put the wrong heading on it and I thought oh, I had to finish that. But they gave me that and now I’m with the Chartered Institute of Secretaries too.
GT: What a fabulous thing. So, now tell me please about your family. You married and had children and when?
BC: Yeah. Well, when I went back to school in, in the class of a family called Derwent and I finished up by marrying her. She was a wonderful chorist. When I went back as a pupil when I was nineteen. And she was, her mother and father were, they were headmaster and headmistress of a Maori school in Turangi and it was pretty amazing rather. He was born in Scotland. A white man buried as a Maori chief. And when they buried him out came the cloak with the kiwi feather. Reserved for Maori chiefs.
GT: The rangatiras.
BC: They were around the Ataahua. All her family were, too [unclear] out. she was, she was white but a great honour for a white man to be buried as a Maori chief.
GT: So you met her before the war and when you came back you married.
BC: I married. Yeah. When I got back I married. I was twenty nine when I got married and I’ve got a wife and three children. That’s my wife there.
GT: She’s got a nurses uniform there.
BC: When I married her she was a theatre sister at Wellington Hospital. Blood and guts.
GT: Fair enough too. And then you lived here in Wellington.
BC: Yeah. I’ve always been in Wellington. Yeah. Ever since the war I’ve been in Wellington. I’ve got a daughter in Wellington. A son in Wainuiomata and a son in England.
GT: So how many grandchildren have you now?
BC: I’ve got two.
GT: Two grandchildren.
BC: Two boys. My daughter’s got two boys and my son in England has got two girls. And that’s my grandson on the right there. He put in for a job in Wellington in New Zealand. Eight hundred put in for it but he got it last year. Three days after he got it he told me he didn’t want it. That, that crowd in Melbourne sent for him and he’s over there. He’s not been long there before he got, he’s got promotion already and the woman in England with that firm wants him in England, and I hear two days ago the boss in Jakarta wants him. He’s, I don’t know, he’s something. I don’t think he’ll finish up in that firm. I think he’ll finish up like John Key making his money out of money which is not good. He just, that’s his father in the centre. He’s a lawyer in Wellington. And his, his father was an All Black. That there.
GT: Really?
BC: Incidentally, do you know what that thing on the left is?
GT: I’m looking at a shield type plaque and it is [pause] it’s the Caterpillar Club.
BC: You wouldn’t credit my name’s on the back of that would you?
GT: Now, Bruce is showing me his Caterpillar Club pin and it is, his name is engraved on the back of it and he’s kept it in a ring, in a ring holder so, and it’s on a small very delicate chain. So it’s a very prestigious thing to be wearing and still have your Caterpillar Club pin. Has it got one eye or two?
BC: One.
GT: It’s got one eye. Yeah.
BC: That’s enough.
GT: Yeah.
BC: What was that?
GT: Yeah. It’s got, yeah it’s got two eyes. Two little red ruby eyes.
BC: I used to think the coloured, two different coloured eyes but that, I believe that’s not true.
GT: Yours has both red. I can see that.
BC: They used to say the, the green eyed one was if you were shot down over the sea but I believe that’s not true. Yeah.
GT: I’ll find out for you, Bruce. I don’t know about that. So, so now, I’m sorry in chatting with you earlier you mentioned your wife had had a stroke and died. And how long ago was that, Bruce? When was that? Your wife died of a stroke. Was that correct?
BC: No. She had a stroke. But she had that. When I brought her home from England they sent her up to Taihape Hospital and she was there for thirteen years. I used to see her every day. Get her out on a Friday. Take her back. But that got too much for me. I used to, she insisted I do her washing. I used to do her washing every day and then do my shopping. And then I’d, it was always late at night. Then a few years ago, three years ago I was working full time. Still working ‘til midnight every night and enjoying it.
GT: At ninety. In your early nineties you were still working.
BC: Most. Yeah. Ninety four. Most of my life I didn’t have a doctor. I went for an insurance policy once and they said to me, ‘What’s your doctor’s name? We want to check up with your doctor?’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a doctor.’ ‘What’s his telephone number?’ I said, ‘Didn’t you hear me? I can’t give you a telephone number because I haven’t got a doctor.’ So, finally I gave them the name of Bill Treadwell. That was a doctor at Wadestown. Used to be a rugby doctor. So when I went down there to be tested a woman tested me. A woman doctor. I spent most of my life without a doctor but I’m very fortunate.
GT: And you’re looking very healthy. Bruce, you also mentioned that you’ve been a very long-time member of the RSA.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And, and that includes Rose and Poppy days. Please tell me about that.
BC: Yes. All together I did a hundred collections for that. They used to have a Poppy, a Rose day which was in, on Armistice Day in November. That stopped in the early 80s but I did, between sixty four and thirty six, that made a hundred. A hundred poppies.
GT: You did thirty four Rose Days and sixty six Poppy Days.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. I did.
GT: Because in England right now, England right now many service people are collecting for poppies and donations.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: I have many friends that post saying they’re doing that.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And you were also the treasurer for the RSA.
BC: I was treasurer for the RSA. Yeah. Before that. That was twenty two years. And my wife was twenty eight. That made a century. That’s a good way to have it.
GT: That’s a good way to have it.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Now, you also mentioned to me a story about someone come up to you while you were collecting.
BC: Oh yes. He said the money doesn’t go to the RSA.
GT: But the gentleman said to you the money doesn’t go to the RSA. So, he was trying to have a go at you.
BC: Right.
GT: And what was your reply?
BC: My reply was that you picked on the wrong one. Of all the collections in Wellington you picked on the wrong one. I’m the treasurer [laughs]
GT: ‘And I know where that money goes,’ you said. Right.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. and in New Zealand the value of the returned serviceman’s association in New Zealand is all about what? What does the RSA do here in New Zealand?
BC: Looking after ex-servicemen and their families. That couldn’t be much more important because after all those blokes that not only did they lose their lives but their families lives were all mucked up too. And, you know I think in Europe there must have been over fifty million people killed. And there would be another fifty million were affected. Growing up without their father or mother or brother. And the same number in the east. And, and now we have a fellow sitting up there going to drop a bomb on it. Up in North Korea. I don’t know.
GT: Yeah. Pretty, pretty strife. Now, you also mentioned you knew Phil Lamason. Can you tell me about knowing Phil Lamason because he was another famous Lancaster pilot.
BC: Yeah. Well, he was, he rolled up in the prisoner of war camp after being in, he’d got out of Buchenwald and he [pause] I think he should if ever a man should have had an award it was him. He found out that they intended doing them all in the next day. He unfortunately got caught just before the invasion and, and he was shifted in to Fresnes Jail. And the Germans decided that all those in Fresnes Jail should be sent to Buchenwald. And that’s how he got there by mistake. But when they said that when he told us that he was air force they I think they struck him. And he used to be a prize fighter himself once. In fact in the book, the book about one of those spies he’s referred to as Lamason with a, with a pugnacious nose. Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Because Phil Lamason he, he was featured in some news articles several years ago but sadly he’s since died so it was of interest to hear you mention his name.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Just recently so. And although you say you’ve been in very good health have you suffered a stroke recently yourself?
BC: No. In 1994 I was very fortunate. I’d just had breakfast and my daughter came around to my home and I said, ‘My breathing’s not working too well.’ She said, ‘I’d better take you to the doctor.’ So we went to the doctor and I finished up by being sent in to Kenepuru for about I don’t know must have been about ten or eleven weeks. But I wasn’t there very long before I was ready to run up and down the corridor. I was shown how to fix the strap. I was ready to run. And then I had a late [unclear] stroke in there. It cost me about eleven weeks at Kenepuru. I’m lucky to be here. Very very fortunate. Most amazing how that happened. Got in here so quickly. And I know somebody in St Giles, in St John’s Church they enquired about coming here and they were told eighteen months. So I was very fortunate.
GT: Certainly very fortunate because in 1996 you went back to Belgium. So, please tell us a little about your trip back to Belgium to meet the people that were in the village where you landed that night.
BC: I did. I can’t recall. All I can recall when I landed was that all these young Germans. It was 1 o’clock in the morning. That’s all I can remember at, in that place. They, they pitched. I had, for some reason or other I had my pilot’s badge was stuck on with a safety pin. Why I don’t know. But that was stolen. And then —
GT: Your pilot’s brevet you’re talking —
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Your wings.
BC: Yeah. That was stolen.
GT: And what about your parachute? Where did you parachute end up?
BC: I don’t know where my parachute ended but that one I got I think was my radio, I think it was my radio operator’s. The silk in it you see was what they wanted for her wedding dress. And —
GT: So there was a woman in the village that used the parachute for her wedding dress.
BC: She gave it. I lifted her a foot off the ground when she gave it to me.
GT: So you went back in 1996.
BC: ’96.
GT: And there’s a lovely photogaph in the Belgian paper articles you’ve shown us.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And she is showing you her gown made from the parachute —
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: Of your wireless operator’s.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And you have a piece of that leftover, of that parachute here in your possession now.
BC: That’s correct. Yeah.
GT: So you still have that. That’s fabulous. So, you were treated, treated very well when you went there. Was that right? You were treated very well, Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah. When I went, when I went in I went over to London for the — incidentally at the you know in London there were about twelve members of the royal family there. Most amazing. And when the English government wouldn’t give a cent towards it. Twelve of the royal family there.
GT: Yeah. Bruce this is the next and the last thing we’re going to talk to you about. And I’d like you to check and tell us that how you managed to get to England in 2012 for the Bomber Command Memorial of London’s opening. Which I was there too and I remember you there now. Please tell us how you got there and, and what happened.
BC: Well, it started off by a client of mine, I’ve still got him as a client, a few days prior said, ‘Are you going to London?’ And I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘The Memorial.’ I said, ‘What’s that all about?’ He told me about it so I decided to apply but unfortunately I made my application the day before they closed and they, the bloke said, ‘I’ll give you a — I’ll give you a week to get it in.’ So, finally I got it in and and and they were pretty strict with the medicals. They didn’t want anything to happen to you while you were — and one poor fella he passed all that and when he got up to Auckland just before his take-off there was another little medical. He got chucked. He got chucked altogether. And at that stage I was sitting on a stool. A three pronged stool. And I had to take, I had to take that with me. Now, at Kuala Lumpur I’m sitting on that stool talking to a doctor and then, and I — what was I talking about? I think I said, ‘We’re all in this life for some reason or other.’ The next thing I’m on the floor and they thought I’d thrown a heart attack. And I got up. I said, ‘Don’t worry about me. Have a look to see if the floor’s damaged,’ [laughs] And you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t credit it. That thing had three prongs on it and it cracked right across there. You wouldn’t believe it. How it came to crack. And my Kiwi rep said to me later on in the night, ‘I found you one of those seats.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ She said, They’re for sale in the front of this beautiful big hotel.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ So, that night we went and had a look. And they had this little shop. Only about half the size of this room. They had two of them so I bought the two of them and, but how it came to break I never. It’s unbelievable how it broke.
GT: So you nearly didn’t make it. So, so a slight bit of background for the folks listening, listening to us is that the New Zealand Bomber Command Association in 2011 got a team together to look to getting as many veterans and their families to England as possible.
BC: Yeah.
GT: For the 2012.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: And in the turn of events the New Zealand government took it off of the Bomber Command people and they organised a 757 of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and their crew. The Chief of the Air Force, Mr Peter Stockwell went as well. And there was thirty three of you chaps selected and each of you were assigned a New Zealand Veteran’s Affairs and a New Zealand Army medical staff person.
BC: Yeah. That’s right.
GT: So they looked after you to get over there. So you flew from New Zealand to England via the Middle East and on the 757 and you stayed in England for about a week or ten days. You were very well looked after. They gave you the best of hotels and you also joined in with us of the 75 Squadron Association’s New Zealand and UK.
BC: That’s right.
GT: And we had a grand day at Mepal and dinner. And also Newmarket and, and at Feltwell. So, can, can you please tell everybody because you were sitting up front next to her majesty and Prince Charles. And did you get to meet them?
BC: No I didn’t. I didn’t feel too well at that and I was sitting a bit away from the front otherwise I would have met them. I did enjoy my night at the Guildhall. And that was my, my son’s mother in law said to me, ‘The Guildhall. Not many people get into the Guildhall,’ and I said, ‘No.’ And I spent a long time speaking to the treasurer of the whole place. Yeah. I found out he was the treasurer.
GT: And you would have gone to the RAF Club as well. Did you go up in to the RAF Club?
BC: No. No.
GT: Across the road.
BC: I can, I remember the Guildhall very well. That was a great night there. When I came home they had a service at the National War Memorial for those who couldn’t go. But the odd one or two blokes who went to London did go and at the last minute I got turned up for an interview. And that, occasionally I read it on the internet and it’s —
GT: So, what did you think of the Memorial, Bruce?
BC: Oh wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. I’ve always, the night before we went to, the day before we went to the Memorial we were driven around and we had a look also at the Memorial that was for Sir, was it Keith Park?
KP: Yeah.
BC: And I was very disappointed at that. Yeah. They didn’t give him a fair go did they? They just didn’t give him a fair go. And I thought that, I thought there’d be a big Memorial for him. You know, you go around London there’s blokes sitting on horses with spears up in the air and yet this very small thing was for Keith Park who did a wonderful job at the start of the war.
GT: He was the saviour of the Battle of Britain, wasn’t he?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, so the statue of the seven airmen. Did they represent you guys do you think? Was their images awesome or —
BC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did that. I’m very impressed with that.
GT: Did you see you up there? Because they’d got the pilot standing up front.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Represent you alright?
BC: It cost about six or seven million. I don’t, I don’t know what it costs them every year to run. Do you know?
GT: There is an upkeep. The Benevolent Fund has the upkeep for that memorial and the 75 Squadron Association —
BC: Not far from Buckingham Palace.
GT: That’s correct.
BC: Yeah.
GT: It’s through the park. Yeah. Yeah.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So Bruce what, our interview with you today has been for the digital archives at the International Bomber Command Centre.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And they’re based in Lincoln. And early in 2018 their brand new building will be opened and that will house a lot of the Memorial and the records of you gentlemen. You, our famous Bomber Command people. And this interview that I’m recording for you and with you now will go towards that digital archive.
BC: Yeah.
GT: So, I think we’ve been speaking for well over an hour and a half so I’ve run right through a lot of the things. Is there anything else you’d like to point out or say?
BC: No. I’ll think of it later on.
GT: Yeah.
BC: I’ll think of something.
GT: You’ll think of something later on but I probably will have gone but —
BC: People say I should write a book but I don’t know. They say I should write a book but I don’t —
GT: You endured so much Bruce. What about the fact that the Bomber Command role could — could Harris have done it any other way?
BC: No. I don’t think so. Aircrew liked him. I don’t think he got a fair go. I don’t know whether he hit it off too well with Churchill. I can’t be sure about that. And I have an article somewhere in my records where that trip to Nuremberg was that it should never have happened. I’ve got that. I think they, they knew we were coming. Lamason made the comment before they went to Nuremberg on that trip he said, ‘This is suicide. We shouldn’t be going this long straight trek with no changes of course. Something fishy here.’ And I’ve seen an article where that might have been. Mind you if it is true it probably saved lives but the air force had to pay. You see, for a long time the Germans thought — they took the word of that spy who said the invasion’s coming from Calais. And they kept all the bigger German equipment around Calais waiting for the invasion. Rommel pleaded for that stuff to be sent down south so he could use it. And they said no. It’s all coming finally at Calais. Of course that was just a big hoax wasn’t it? They had no intention. That might have been the reason why we lost a lot at Nuremberg. The spy told them the route and everything. They were waiting for the RAF that night. But I don’t know whether that’s true or not.
GT: The fabulous thing is you survived.
BC: Yeah.
GT: And I’m very honoured to be talking with you here today. And we’ve got Poppy Days coming up but I know that you’ve retired from that. Yeah.
BC: That bloke who took over from me on Poppy Day he died a couple months ago.
KP: Yeah. That one.
GT: Yeah. Oh gosh. So, so the Bomber Command gentlemen, and your numbers are dwindling very quick and I’m so privileged to be able to come and talk with you today in your place and I —
BC: I don’t, I don’t think I’ll be interviewed again in my lifetime now.
GT: Well, you can be rest assured that the people listening to these recordings, this recording with you will sit back and be very honoured to listen to what you’ve had to say to us today.
BC: I bought one of these things before I came here. Never used it and it’s gone. I don’t know where it is. I asked my daughters a couple of times where it’s gone but they don’t remember.
GT: One last thing then, Bruce. What do you think of the Lancaster Mark 2?
BC: Oh marvellous. I’ve seen the fellow [unclear], an engineer on the Mark 2 said they suited him fine. They were much more powerful and they were better. Stood much more damage but they wouldn’t go up quite so high and on a long trip they couldn’t quite take so much ammunition because they needed more petrol. That’s right. They needed more petrol. But I can remember seeing a Mark 3 take off on our short runways once and when they got to the end of the, then end of the runway [unclear]. We used to take off in the middle of the night six ton of bombs aboard on those short runways. And they were much more powerful. My garage clients put a heated, about the make-up of the different engines. He said the Bristol motor was much much better. A better motor.
GT: Wow.
BC: And he’d know all about engines and that.
GT: Yeah. And your aircraft was the three hundredth off the production line.
BC: That’s right. Yeah.
GT: That you were shot down on.
BC: Yes.
GT: That was last one produced.
BC: Yeah.
GT: You were saying to me.
BC: It must have been a costly business running a war with all those aeroplanes. The cost must have been absolutely fantastic. Was that what crippled England after the war? I don’t know.
GT: It did. Well, Bruce I think it’s time that we, we sign off our recording now. And I I must thank you very much. And for Kaye who’s been sitting here listening and in awe of Bruce’s story as well. For introducing me to Bruce here. So, I’m going to say thank you very much. It’s now quarter past five on the evening of the 4th of November 2017 here at Bruce Cunningham’s place at the Rita Angus Retirement Village in Kilbirnie, New Zealand. And I’m sure that dinner awaits down below so I’m going to say thank you very much for, for chatting with us and I will make this recording —
BC: I wish as well. I don’t know that it will be. I hope it is.
GT: You can have the last word Bruce.
BC: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: Thank you very much, Bruce. Yeah.
BC: Thank you.
GT: Thank you
BC: Thank you.
GT: Alright.
[paused]
BC: I have a great deal of trouble with electronics. Hunter aeroplanes.
GT: Did you? Hunters.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah.
BC: And he started off to be a lawyer in New Zealand and [paused] in charge of 707s.
[recording paused]
BC: And when people ask me, when they ask me I don’t think I should say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ If they ask you a question. Tell them. Get on with it.
GT: Yeah.
BC: You know in POW you didn’t even speak about what you did during the war. You didn’t know and couldn’t care. My brother he was in the army. I didn’t know what he did. He didn’t know what I did either. My family don’t know what I did. They haven’t got a clue. If they asked me I’d tell them. They don’t ask me. I don’t tell them. It doesn’t arise.
GT: Many choose not to speak so I’m honoured that you’ve spoken to me today. Thank you.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. Now, actually I’ll take a picture of you two.
KP: Oh no. Don’t take a picture of me. I don’t like being photographed. Bruce, would you like me to go out and ask them to bring your tea in here?
BC: No. No. No. I normally go out a little bit later but I’ll catch up. They’re old people. They take a while to eat and talk too much. I’m not. I’m only ninety seven.
GT: Bruce, I’m going to take a picture of you by yourself because I’ve got a picture here. Actually, if I just put that there so that’s Bruce Cunningham and you’ve got your Lancaster pictures up above you.
KP: He’s Lancaster pictures all over the place.
GT: Which is fabulous and I love that. Now similar with the other gentleman. Jack Meehan.
BC: Eh?
GT: Remember Jack Meehan who was on the trip in 2012.
BC: Oh, I remember the name. Yeah.
GT: Jack died at Christmas time. Dick Lampier. He died a couple of years ago. Dick was in the wheelchair.
BC: Oh yeah.
GT: Was he ok? Some said he wasn’t.
KP: Oh I remember. He was a Wellington man wasn’t he?
GT: No. Lancaster.
BC: Where I —
GT: Jake Wakefield.
KP: No. No. I mean Wellington. Wellington city.
GT: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
KP: Yes. I remember. He was a very difficult man.
BC: I went to see my son and he gave me a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful photo of — what was the double VC bloke’s name?
GT: Oh Upham.
BC: Upham. Yeah.
GT: Charles Upham.
BC: Oh beautiful photo. Gold lettering, and he said, ‘Take that back to New Zealand with you.’ Big one. Great big photo. And I said, ‘I don’t know whether I can get it on the aeroplane.’ He said, ‘Take it back.’ I gave it to a doctor who was, got a very high rank in New Zealand. In the army. Oh terrific rank. Right at the top. I said this is, this is a very high rank. He said well I had to give it up to come over here. I gave it to her and she bought half, and the last I saw of it in Auckland. She waved me and went out and said here’s the picture. And I think, I think it might be in the boss’s office of the Vet’s Affairs in Wellington.
KP: Oh right.
BC: I’m not sure.
KP: Oh, I don’t think —
GT: And you haven’t seen it.
KP: I’m just going to tell them that you are late for tea. I’ll be back in a moment.
GT: And you haven’t seen it since.
BC: Yeah.
[pause]
GT: Ok. Ron’s in that one. [pause] Ron was there.
BC: My crew are there somewhere.
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Eh?
GT: Have you still got your logbook?
BC: Yeah.
GT: And your medals.
BC: Yeah.
GT: Are your medals on here.
BC: Yeah. I don’t know. I never wear my — I don’t like wearing medals. I don’t like wearing them.
GT: No.
BC: I don’t. I don’t. I don’t like wearing my medals for some reason or other.
GT: Did you, did you get all your medals though?
[pause]
KP: You still haven’t seen the magic book that was the start of all of this. You’ll just have to come again.
GT: Yeah. I will.
BC: At one station I was at I was quite, quite a green sort of a pilot and the flight commander called us in and said, ‘I want to do something. I want to help you people. If you mention a word about it I’ll kill you.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s the story.’ He said, ‘The wing commander wants to come for a flight tonight and I’ve been asked to give him a crew so he can test fly. But I don’t want to do it that way. I want you to draw lots as to who takes the wing commander.’ Because Joe Soap loses the, loses it, what’s the name. I had to take the wing commander. It was the best thing I ever did during my air force. I took him. We got over the place and we couldn’t bomb it because of cloud and the navigator said, ‘Oh hang on.’ — do this, do that, do that. ‘Bombs away.’ We took a photo and it was very difficult thing to get in Wales and it came out and we won the bombing competition.
GT: Oh wow.
BC: [unclear] But to have our photo taken in front of an aeroplane. And the wing commander was so full of himself he was going around the officer’s mess saying how he’d bombed this place in Wales. In Wales. ‘Well, you all you did, you were a passenger.’ They took the photo and it didn’t come out did it? The next station I said, ‘I want my photo back.’ And that’s it.
GT: That’s it there.
KP: Oh.
GT: Your crews too.
BC: That’s it.
GT: Right. Ok. So I’m going to take a shot of that but what —
BC: When we were at Kuala Lumpur we were held up for the plane to be fixed or something and I went away from the rest of the crowd and I sat on my own. And some girls came over and they were security girls at Kuala Lumpur. And I took a liking to them and they did the same for me. Finally they called us all to the aeroplane and she grabbed my arm and walked me towards the aeroplane. Now, now people on either side of the aeroplane watching. And the squadron leader called out, seen me walking with this girl arm in arm. ‘What’s going on here?’ I said, ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, mate. I’m not going back to New Zealand.’ He said, ‘Oh you’ve got a new girlfriend have you?’ That’s them.
GT: That’s them there is it? Lovely.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think she was blinking though.
KP: Oh, who cares.
GT: That’s right. The one behind’s even lovely.
KP: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: We did a couple of trips to Malaysia. I’ve been with the Sky Hawks.
BC: Athletic champ while I was at college.
KP: So that’s —
GT: Very nice.
BC: That’s where I [pause] that’s where I’m nineteen. Head prefect.
GT: You were destined. Now — oh is that you?
BC: Yeah.
GT: Oh gosh. I’m going to have to keep taking photographs. I wish I’d brought my scanner actually.
[pause]
KP: This is a really good photo. Who are you talking to there?
BC: Oh, that’s the bloke that put me in the Wall Street Journal.
KP: Oh right.
GT: I think you like interviews.
BC: Has she finished?
KP: Isn’t that a neat photo because it’s a doing things photo. Right.
BC: She finished up in the Wall Street Journal.
GT: Leaning up against the, that’s a really good story isn’t it?
KP: Yeah. It’s just —
GT: I’m surprised you bought another couple of three legged stools after that one breaking on you.
BC: Yeah.
KP: And there’s the, yeah here’s the lady with the parachute silk.
BC: Yeah. The woman who made her wedding dress.
GT: One thing we didn’t discuss Bruce was when you took your commission.
[pause]
KP: Here’s one taken here. Here by the look of it. Oh there’s another.
BC: Oh she was a —
KP: That’s a different one.
BC: She was a Countess that one. That’s in Belgium. At the reception.
KP: Oh.
GT: That was ’45. That was June ’45 as well.
BC: Yeah. One of those blokes, I’m not sure which one, air commodore. Prisoner of war.
GT: So when did you get your commission?
BC: Eh?
GT: When did you get your commission because you’ve got an officer’s —
BC: Yeah.
GT: Suit on there. You said you were a flight sergeant.
BC: I wanted to go to the New Zealand forces club and a fellow at Bennington, from Marsden said, ‘You haven’t got a commission. Why haven’t got one?’ The next time I see him he said to me, ‘Put in for it. You’ll get it straightaway.’ I said, ‘Oh you’re talking rubbish.’ He said I’d take it anyway. Next time I was in London he said, ‘Haven’t you put in for that yet? Put in. You’ll get it straight away. I’m telling you.’ I didn’t realise at the time that he must have been in the know for something. I decided yes, I’ll put in and so help me it came through straight away. They had, they had a church service on Waterbeach and I didn’t go and all those who didn’t go were given drill to do. And while I was doing it a bloke came over to me and said, ‘We can’t drill you any longer. You’re an officer.’ I thought that’s funny. After all my connection with the church I get in to trouble. I get some drill for not going to church. That’s unusual. All my connections over donkeys — a lifetime in the church. And now I’m in trouble for not going to church. But of course when I got pulled out for the drill everyone said boo hoo hoo, ‘Why are you getting off for and we’ve got to stay here and do the drill?’
GT: People are really strange, aren’t they?
KP: They are strange. Yeah.
GT: [unclear] what they do.
KP: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Bruce Cunningham
Creator
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Glen Turner
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACunninghamAB171104
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Format
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02:02:42 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Bruce Cunningham was born in New Zealand. After initial training as a pilot he was posted to RAF Wescott Operational Training Unit and flew operations with 514 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. His first operation was over Berlin. On one operation they were shot down and as he landed on the roof of the house he looked up at the sky as the other aircraft were heading for home. One lady from the village used the parachute silk for her wedding dress. He became a prisoner of war and was sent to Stalag Luft 3.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
11 OTU
514 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
Dulag Luft
evading
fear
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
memorial
Operational Training Unit
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Stradishall
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Westcott
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/797/10779/PDeanJEH1701.2.jpg
bceede6a4853b1983c889df55bddcadc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/797/10779/ADeanJEH170913.1.mp3
6f47adb3b5809113563fa431fe9e92f6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Dean, John Eric Hatherly
J E H Dean
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Dean DFC (1922, 173978 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 77 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Dean, JEH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Dean. The interview is taking place in Mr Dean’s home in Westerham in Kent on the 13th of September 2017. Ok, John if you could perhaps tell me where and when you were born and a bit about your early life.
JD: Yeah. Well, I was born at Edmonton in North London in 1922 which means that I’m ninety four. Ninety five next birthday. And I grew up mainly in London but my family moved out when I was about twelve and we went to, to live in Middlesex. And I remember on the morning of the 15th of August 1940 standing outside the house where I lived with my parents and watching a German aircraft which I think was an FW190 being pursued by a Spitfire. This was in, coming from North London and the FW190 had smoke coming out of its engines and obviously the Spitfire had [coughs] had shot it down. It was pursuing it until it crashed. And from that moment on I decided I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot. And as I was just over eighteen I was able to go to the RAF recruiting office in London and I joined up. I joined up on the 1st of November 1940 when I was eighteen years and four days, four days, five days old. So that was my introduction to the Air Force. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve my ambition of becoming a Spitfire pilot because although I did elementary and basic flying training on, on Tiger Moths and later on Harvards I met my Waterloo on Harvards because I developed this annoying habit of landing the aircraft about thirty feet above the runway. So [laughs] they took me off Harvards and sent me to a navigation school in, in Canada in fact which was quite interesting and I did my training there and came back, and I was, ultimately found myself in Bomber Command with 77 Squadron.
DM: When, when you went to Canada you went by ship I assume.
JD: Yes. Sure.
DM: Was that sort of eventful or was it an easy, an easy trip?
JD: Well, only eventful to the extent that it was very uncomfortable because we went out in a very small Dutch vessel called the Volendam. And it was only about, I don’t know twenty five thousand tonnes or so. A very small ship and there were masses of us crowded in this small ship. And for most it took fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and most of the time we were in a violent storm and the number of people who were sick on each other. I can remember it, you know with some horror really. But on the way back we came back on the Queen Mary which was then a troop ship and that did the trip in three and a half days so that wasn’t too bad. Yes.
DM: Whereabouts in Canada did you train?
JD: Well, we went eventually, initially to a place called Saskatchewan. Swift Current in Saskatchewan and we went by train from Halifax and that took, as far as I can recall it took about four days to get to, to Swift Current which was then a tiny hamlet but today I gather its quite a rather large township. And there I did some flying training on, on Harvards, and as I say my training came to an end and I then went back. Was transferred to a place called Chatham in New Brunswick to do my navigation training.
DM: So you came back to the UK. Trained as a navigator. So, I suppose the next thing, was it crewing up that happened next?
JD: Yeah. We went to [pause] it was either 1652 or 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at, it was either Marston Moor or Lisset. I can’t remember precisely and there I got crewed up with an Australian pilot called [Gallant Lee] and he had already acquired all the other crew members and it was, it was the flight engineer who approached me asking me if I was looking for crew. So I said yes and that’s how, you know I met my crew. And as soon as that happened of course we were posted off to, to 77 Squadron and we did half our tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] at Elvington.
DM: What type of aircraft were you flying?
JD: Halifaxes. We started off in the early Halifaxes with inline engines. The Merlins. And of course they were very much underpowered. Anyway, we did half the tour with Bill [Gallant Lee] the Australian and then he was grounded with sinus trouble. So, we were then transferred back to I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit which was then Marston Moor to find another pilot which we did. And he was a South African. A flight lieutenant called Smiler Welch. And he was called Smiler because he was never seen to smile. Typical RAF humour, you know. So we got back to the squadron with Smiler Welch, and he immediately became a flight commander which meant that we didn’t operate very often. Perhaps once every two or three weeks rather than every other night. So it meant that we took about six months to complete our tour. So all in all we were on the squadron for a year to complete a tour. Which was much longer than most people of course. Anyway, we, we were successful in completing our tour of thirty three ops which included six mine laying trips, which as you probably know was each mine laying trip was counted as a half. And then that took us up to July or, yeah July or August 1944 and at the end of my tour I was transferred back to Marston Moor as an instructor. And that lasted for about six months until about December 1944, or January of forty, no. It must have been a bit later because we were posted. Oh, incidentally yes I acquired a new crew at Marston Moor and at the end of the six months training we were posted to India. And we were all packed up ready to go when the war ended fortunately. So we didn’t go to India. So I stayed on. I forgot to mention at the end of my training my crew and I were transferred to Transport Command and we stayed on in Transport Command until I left the RAF in 1947.
DM: So we go back to I suppose really you could say that your operation, your thirty flights or more because you did some mine laying flights was sort of split into two halves with two different pilots.
JD: Yeah.
DM: As you said the chap who had the problem with his sinuses and then the South African. Were they both similar in their outlook or —
JD: Completely different.
DM: Right.
JD: Yeah. Bill [Gallant Lee], he took a violent dislike to me when we met [laughs] He used to refer to me as, ‘That bloody pommie,’ you know [laughs] And anyway eventually we settled our differences and got on extremely well. And I liked Bill. He was a very straight talking Australian as most, most Australians are and he died, oh it must be about ten or fifteen years ago and I was very sorry to hear that. Yeah. Completely different to Welch. He was a very, what’s the word I’m looking for? He never said very much and —
DM: Taciturn, I suppose.
JD: Gave the impression he was terribly unhappy with life generally, you know. And whereas my flight engineer, unfortunately he died two years ago he kept in touch very closely with Bill [Gallant Lee] in Australia and actually visited him. With Smiler Welch he, at the end of the war he disappeared from our orbit and we never heard from him again. And I don’t know whether he’s still alive or not. I did try to find out some years ago by writing to somebody in South Africa. There’s an organisation which is connected to the RAF but they had never heard of him. Anyway, so that was Welch. A completely different cup of tea.
DM: Have you any particular memories from operations? Any close calls? Any sort of particular horrors, or —
JD: During our tour?
DM: Yes.
JD: Well, yes I mean it is extraordinary. I’ve always, I still think this, I thought it for some time. I think it’s extraordinary how in the midst of such horror going on with aircraft being shot down and being, catching fire and so on we virtually sailed through our thirty three ops with hardly a scratch. I did think there were a number of people who experienced the same thing, but there were one or two incidents where we came very close to meeting our doom as it were. One was a case where we were bombed by another aircraft and this was on a daylight raid. Not a daylight raid. A night raid to a place called Lens which was a big, big marshalling yard in France and it was so important that the Pathfinders had lit up the place with their flares so when we got there it was just like daylight and there were about three hundred and fifty aircraft converging on this place, Lens. And as we were doing our bombing run the flight engineer, Derek who was standing up next to the pilot and on the Halifax there was an astrodome immediately above where the engineer worked. He looked up and he said, he said, ‘There’s an aircraft right above us.’ And then there was a pause of a few seconds and he said, ‘There’s a bomb coming down.’ And a few seconds later it hit the aircraft and came in to the Halifax. Well, we were a bit, well to say a bit scary was probably an understatement but we just waited for this damned thing to explode but it didn’t. And then after about a minute or so the pilot said to the engineer, ‘Derek, go back and see what it is.’ And he undid his, his intercom and went back and then a few seconds later he came back on and said, he said, ‘I’ve got the bomb. It’s a twelve pound oil bomb.’ And by that time the, the aircraft that that had dropped it had moved off but Derek knew sufficiently enough, enough about aircraft to identify it as being a Stirling. And then there was a debate in the aircraft I remember. Half the crew wanted to take the damned thing back, the bomb. And the other half wanted to get rid of it.
DM: Which half were you with?
JD: What?
DM: Which side were you on?
JD: I wanted to keep it actually [laughs] and then the pilot intervened and said, ‘Enough of this bloody nonsense. Get rid of it.’ And so Derek got rid of it. So that was a very close call because I gather that there were untold instances of aircraft being bombed but nobody lived to tell the story. But we were probably very lucky. And then we had one or two encounters with, with night fighters which was a bit scary and on one occasion we were very severely hit by an anti-aircraft shell which completely disabled all our electrics. It didn’t interfere with the flying ability of the aircraft strangely enough. The engines kept working. But it meant that when we got back to UK we had no means of communicating with the ground and at the same time we, I was operating a navigational aid called Gee. You’ve probably heard of it. And that didn’t work, and it was still very dark when we got back to the UK and none of us had a bloody clue as to what, where we were. So we were stooging around UK looking for somewhere to land and then we saw this runway lit up and so we just went, went in and landed and of course we were unable to tell the people who we were so they started firing at us with, [laughs] well, I suppose it must have been some sort of cannon or something. Fortunately, they were very bad shots. Anyway, we landed and we couldn’t open the hatch to get out because this anti-aircraft shell had damaged the door so they had to, the people, the people on the ground had to go off and get a long piece of wood and smash the door in. So, and then we found out that we’d landed at a, what was it called? [pause] What was the name of the training unit before an HCU?
DM: Oh.
JD: It’s something like an Initial Training Unit or something.
DM: Yes. Yes.
JD: Anyway, it was, it was Silverstone which later became, you know the motor racing place, and they were training crews for Bomber Command using Wellingtons. So that, you know what was a nice ending to the story too. Again, what could have been quite a nasty ending because we were lucky to find an aircraft. I think we had about ten minutes petrol left when we landed. Yeah. So one or two quite narrow escapes, but from which we, we emerged successfully as it were.
DM: Was that the only time you got lost or did you have other — ?
JD: No [laughs] To my everlasting and undying shame we got completely lost on my first operation which was to Mannheim. And Mannheim is, let me see, it is, it is northwest of Berlin and it is situated between Berlin and the north coast of Germany. Up near [pause] I can’t, it’s, it’s sort of in the Lubeck, Lubeck area, where the coast is. And the route planners took us up north of, of the northern coast over the North Sea so that to give the impression to the Germans we were heading for Berlin, and then about fifty miles short of Lubeck we had to turn a sharp right and approach Mannheim from the north. Well, somehow and I don’t know how it was I turned right about twenty miles west of Lubeck instead of fifty. No. The other way around. Sorry. We turned right which is what we should have done so that it took us down to the west of Mannheim, and I remember the flight engineer saying after we’d flown, after we’d turned right for about an hour or so the flight engineer saying, he said, ‘It’s very strange,’ he said, There’s a big, big fire on our, on our port side.’ He said, ‘I wonder what that is.’ So I had a look at my chart and then I realised I’d made a gigantic error. So I said to, it was still Bill [Gallant Lee] then, I said, ‘Bill, I’m dreadfully sorry. I’ve made a complete cockup,’ I said, ‘We’ve turned too early.’ And I said, ‘Mannheim is on our left.’ And he said, ‘Ok.’ So he turned the aircraft to the left and we, instead of approaching Mannheim from the north we were on the west side of Mannheim and we were meeting aircraft coming out of Mannheim having dropped their bombs. So, again it was rather a perilous thing to do but we did it. We went back and dropped our bombs on Mannheim and managed to get through. So when I can, you know I think it was an example of the guardian angels looking after us really. But when I got back we had to, I had to discuss, you know the trip with the squadron navigation officer which was the usual thing and he looked at me and he said, ‘John, you are bloody lucky aren’t you to be here?’ And he was right actually. But that was the only time I got lost I think.
DM: When you were training navigators after your, you know, when you went to the HCU to be trainer was that mainly ground based or was there a lot of flying?
JD: On the contrary, no. We, most of the time we spent in the air. This was at Chatham, in New Brunswick. Most of the time we were flying Ansons and you know, the training at Brunswick I do recall was very exhaustive, and we were trained by Canadian instructors and they were very, very good and passionate about the job they were doing, you know. And we spent, I can’t remember exactly I’d have to refer to my logbook, but we spent a great number of flying hours in Ansons training and one of the things we did was to take, we did quite a lot of training on aerial photography. And somewhere in the house here I’ve got quite a lot of photos of, taken from Ansons. A very slow, sort of noisy aircraft but very interesting.
DM: When you were a trainer so, because you did some training between your tours I think, didn’t you?
JD: Yeah. Well, I was with [pause] I did my, yeah I was an instructor at I think it was 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit and of course there we flew again. I think it was Wellingtons. I can’t remember. But my job was to, again mainly in the air. I did very little instructing on the ground. I used to go up with trainee navigators as part of their training to observe what they were doing and to correct them if I thought they were doing anything wrong. So I did quite a lot flying there.
DM: Where were you based when you were doing that?
JD: I think that was Marston Moor. I should have got my logbook with me but I think that that would tell me. But I think it was Marston Moor. Quite near York. A celebrated historical place, of course.
DM: Indeed.
JD: Yeah.
DM: Yeah. So, I assume that included night exercises as well as daytime flying.
JD: Sorry, the —
DM: Night exercises as well as daytime when you were assessing the navigators.
JD: Oh yes. Sure.
DM: Was that, did you feel safe? Or —
JD: Well, yes because [pause] did I feel safe? Well, I suppose I did [laughs] Yes. I mean we were using, we were using Gee and whereas Gee was jammed over, over Europe, in Britain it wasn’t of course and it was an excellent navigation aid that I recall. So we were never lost at all. So I felt you know completely confident that we’d get back all right.
DM: So then you were supposedly going to go to India but as you say that didn’t happen because the war ended. And then, but you were in Transport Command.
JD: Yes. We were. After the war we were transferred from Elvington in Yorkshire to a place called Stradishall in, in Suffolk and that was about twenty five miles south of Bury St Edmunds. And Stradishall Aerodrome was a peacetime RAF base so that all the buildings were pre-war RAF buildings, including the officers mess because by that time I’d been commissioned. And whereas previously in, at Elvington we had to bunk down in in Nissen huts at Stradishall we had posh buildings and rooms to ourselves you know. So that was quite a step up in the social world as it were. Yeah. And the aerodrome of course was right next to Stradishall village. A tiny village. About two or three hundred people and it was there, of course I met my wife and got married.
DM: So, she was a local girl was she?
JD: Yeah. She was the wife of the local vicar so, and I met her in a pub dare it be said. Yeah. So, that was Stradishall and we operated out of Stradishall flying a variety of aircraft including the York which was the model, the civilian version of the Lancaster. And the York was the first aircraft where we were allowed to smoke. In Halifaxes and I understand Lancasters and certainly Wellingtons it was absolutely taboo to smoke in aircraft. Unlike the Americans where they used to issue out cigars if you wanted them I gather. But in the York I don’t know why but we were allowed to smoke. Most of us did smoke then of course so that we did. But we used [pause] yes. Smoke. Sorry, Yorks and Stirlings, and the Stirlings were found to be not very stable aircraft, and there were a number of crashes both her in the UK and also enroute. And the route to India took us via Libya. That was the first stop. I remember that it took us ten hours from our base in Stradishall to get to the first bit. The first landing stage in Libya. So we were pretty worn out then, and then after we’d spent a night there and then the next stage was Cairo West which as the name indicates is west of Cairo and that only took about, about eight hours. Seven or eight hours. And then we went from Cairo West to Habbaniya or Habbaniya I’m not quite sure which is the right pronunciation, in Iraq which was an RAF base. A peacetime base. And we landed there for refuelling and then after a few hours we took off, and then we went through to Karachi which was the end of my journey. Although on one occasion we went down to Madras so the whole of that trip was of course very interesting. And I remember on one occasion we were going in to Habbaniya or Habbaniya in Iraq and there was some natives on the ground who started, who had rifles and they started firing at us. So the pilot said to ground control, he said, ‘What the hell’s happening?’ And the controller said, ‘Well, go around and disappear for a minute because we’ve got a little tribal war going on.’ And apparently in that area one tribe used to fight with another sort of every other Wednesday, you know, and that sort of thing. And when we appeared we were another choice target and fortunately they were very bad shots. Anyway, that was quite exciting.
DM: What sort of things were you carrying?
JD: Well, mainly war material but it was all boxed up so we didn’t, we didn’t know what it contained. We assumed it was things like guns and other stuff which, which couldn’t be left in India. And occasionally half a dozen people but not very many because the aircraft wasn’t really converted to carry passengers. It was mainly boxes and we never knew quite was in them. It could have been bombs I suppose but they never told us. Also we were able to, I remember on one occasion we were allowed to bring, I think it was one item which we brought locally in Karachi and most of the, most of my crew bought carpets so there were quite a large proportion of the air craft was taken up with carpets. Anyway, we got those through. Yes. Happy days.
DM: Did you used to fly things out to India or was it an empty aircraft?
JD: Sorry? No. As far as I recall we flew out empty. I can’t remember [pause] Yeah. I don’t think we took anything out. It was, we were just meant to bring things back. Quite why they used aircraft to do this I never found out because it would have been a damned sight cheaper to use, you know ships. I suspect that those boxes contained, you know what we would refer to as secret material of some kind but they never told us. Never told me anyway. I suppose the pilot knew. And in those days of course when you’re young you tend to accept things without question don’t you?
DM: That’s true.
JD: Which we did.
DM: So you were doing that for about two years.
JD: Yeah. Again, I’d have to refer to my logbook. Yeah. Actually, I’ve got the chronological times a bit wrong. I was transferred from Elvington, the squadron to Marston Moor as an instructor in July 1944 and that went on until December 19 — 1944. January. And then in January 1945 I’d forgotten to mention I was transferred from Marston Moor to [pause] to Stradishall. That’s right. I’m sorry. I think I said that I went from Elvington to Stradishall. That’s not the case. I went from Marston Moor to Stradishall where we were formed up as 51 Squadron and it was 51 Squadron who did all the flying to India. So, I hope you can make —
DM: Yeah.
JD: Sense of all that. And so we flew from India from, from [unclear] flew to India from Stradishall from about January 1945 to July ‘47. Just over two years.
DM: Did you volunteer for that or did you not have any choice?
JD: We were just told, you know.
DM: Right.
JD: There was no question of —
DM: Yeah. Yeah.
JD: Yeah. Well, they had to. I mean, now that it is all over of course one realises that Bomber Command HQ had to find somewhere to put all its aircrew, surviving aircrew you know so that they could become gainfully employed. And I suppose Transport Command was the obvious choice really. I mean I don’t know how many other members of 77 Squadron ended up in Transport Command. All that I know is that we were told to go there. We went.
DM: Could you have stayed on longer if you’d wanted to?
JD: Yes. I could and in fact that was my intention. I wanted to stay on in the RAF but my wife, well we got married fairly, fairly soon after we met really. Oh yes. It was at Stradishall on 51 Squadron after I’d got married there that we, I was posted, we were posted to India. And when I said, told my wife about this she said, ‘Do you really want to go?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Well, I don’t want you to go either. What about coming out of the RAF?’ So, that was why I left really.
DM: Right. What did you do when you came out?
JD: Well, I spent some time trying to find out what I wanted to do and eventually came up with the, with the answer that I wanted to be a surveyor. And at that time the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors which I wanted to become a member of had arranged training courses at various places and I applied for one and I got a training place. And this was at [pause] somewhere near Reading I think it was. I can’t remember. And that training lasted for about six months to give us a basic, a basic idea what a surveyor did and then the rest of the time in order to qualify I got a job at Ipswich where my wife was living and did home study to qualify. And that took me about three years and then eventually I sat their exams and did qualify and I became an Associate Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. But I then did, having qualified it sounds strange to say this but I found it very difficult to get a job, a paid job and this was because so many people had decided to travel this route because of this, the availability of this training. And the only job I could find was in Manchester and I went home and told my wife. She said, ‘I’m not going to Manchester.’ I said, ‘Well, what will we do?’ She said, ‘Well, we must find something else to do.’ And then I spoke to a colleague of mine who’d, he wasn’t . He didn’t train as a surveyor. He’d done something else. And he said, ‘Why don’t you write to — ’ he said, ‘I do know that they need surveyors abroad. Why don’t you write to the Colonial Office and ask them if they’ve got any vacancies?’ Which I did, and they wrote back. Well, I went up for an interview and they wrote back six weeks later and said, “Dear Mr Dean, we can offer you, thank you for coming for an interview. We can offer you a post in Hong Kong.” And I really wanted to go but my wife wasn’t very keen so I wrote back and said, “Well, thank you very much. Do you have anything a bit sort of a bit nearer? Say, like Africa?’ And they wrote back strangely enough and said yes and they offered me another job in Northern Rhodesia. So that’s where I went and I spent fifteen years there. Not as a surveyor. I went out, they said to me that the only job available at the time was as an administrator. So I went out as a, what was called a district officer and spent, you know fifteen years there. And that was quite good fun. Africa of course was, well I don’t know about today of course. It’s a bit, it’s a bit sort of full of guns and dictators but in our time of course it was very peaceful and the conditions of work were very good. We used to do a tour of three years and get six months leave and that sort of thing. Ostensibly, the six months leave was because of the unhealthy living conditions but where we were in Northern Rhodesia we found it extremely healthy but fortunately the authorities hadn’t caught up with that.
[telephone ringing – interview paused]
DM: So you came back, I suppose. Back to the UK.
JD: Yeah. Came back to the UK and I got a job as a, with a national training organisation where eventually I became a personnel manager and that, that lasted until about fifteen years when the training organisation I was with closed down. And so for the second. Oh yes. I was with, I was in Northern Rhodesia until it became independent. It became Zambia and I stayed on. It became, Northern Rhodesia became independent in October 1964 and I stayed on for a couple of years until, until ’64. Yeah. Until ‘66 ’67. And then I decided that it was time to retire and come back because there really wasn’t much future in Zambia for white civil servants quite naturally. So I came back and I managed to find a job as I say with this training organisation where I became personnel manager and that lasted for fifteen years until the organisation closed down. And then I became, I was very lucky because I was out of work for about two or three months which I found extremely boring. Then I don’t know quite how it happened but I managed to find a job as, as bursar to a school in Kent and that lasted until well past retiring age. So, again I was very lucky.
DM: Did you keep in touch with people from the Air Force?
JD: Yes. Well, I kept in touch with, I’d already said the pilot, by that time of course Bill [Gallant Lee] our first pilot had died and Smiler Welch, the second guy, pilot had just disappeared. But I kept in close touch with Derek Compton, my flight engineer and we used to meet up occasionally. He lived down in Dorset at Christchurch and he died about two years ago. I also met up with my wireless operator who lived in Liverpool and I did a trip up there to meet him. I got along with him extremely well. And I also met, I also met the rear gunner. Butch Sutton. He was called Butch because he was the son of a butcher you know. RAF term. The bomb aimer I didn’t keep in touch with because he lived in Scotland and the rear gunner [Kitch May] sorry, the mid-upper gunner [Kitch May] lived in Cornwall. But I used to, we used to correspond [Kitch May] and so for a few years anyway I kept in touch with most of the crew but towards the end it was because they, you know how it is you stop writing and stuff like that. But with Derek Compton my flight engineer I stayed with him several times and unfortunately the poor chap died about two years ago. So yes I did keep in touch and also 77 Squadron formed a Squadron Association which I joined and we formed, when I say we members in the south of England formed a sub-branch because the main meeting was up in Yorkshire I believe. Anyway, there were about a dozen or so of us in the south who formed this sub-branch and we used to meet every May at [pause] I’m afraid my memory isn’t very good these days, a town down [pause] I can’t remember where it is. The town begins with M but it doesn’t matter the name of the place. We used to meet at the White Horse in this town starting with M and there were about a dozen or so of us and we used to meet sometimes with our wives or girlfriends, whatever and chat and have lunch you know. And I used to meet Derek Compton my engineer there. He was there on every occasion. And I used to pick up another navigator from 77 Squadron who was badly shot up over [pause] again my memory lets me down. It’s a big, a big port in France. In Brittany. Beginning with B I think it is.
DM: [unclear]
JD: Can you remember it? You can’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. But the poor chap got badly shot up and virtually lost an eye so he was grounded and he lived at [pause] oh dear. Again, my memory for places. He lived at [pause] well about thirty miles from here towards Guildford. Near Guildford. He lived near Guildford and I used to get there and because, because of his eye he couldn’t drive and he, he had a very nice Mercedes car. And when we first met he said to me, ‘Will you drive me to the reunion?’ I said, ‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘But there’s one condition.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘You let me drive your Mercedes.’ And he said yes. So once a year I got the opportunity of driving this magnificent car down to wherever it was. And the poor chap he developed dementia and eventually was admitted to a home. You know, a nursing home and died there about three years ago. But he and I, we knew each other from, from the squadron and we got on extremely well. And he, he ended up as a director of operations with British Airways so he had done very well. But I remember one of his drawbacks was on the way down, driving in this car of his he kept on saying to me, ‘Now, do you know where you are, Dean?’ you know [laughs] And I used to tell him, I used to say, ‘For God’s sake, shut up otherwise we shall get lost.’ But we had a good relationship and I’m sorry, I was very sorry he died, you know. Yeah. Those were most of the people who went, who attended these, these May meetings. Of course, it got to a point where it was difficult for them to drive or get to to the meetings. So we abandoned it or it was abandoned about two years ago. And it was started I remember that the whole this, this sub-branch was started by a man called Varley, who was another navigator who I knew and he unfortunately he died to. So I’m beginning to think I’m about the only one left from 77 Squadron. There must be others. Talking about the survivors I was interested to find out quite recently how many Bomber Command aircrew are left alive today. And I’ve always thought it was about between three and four thousand and I tried to get in touch with the Bomber Command Association of which I used to be a member but I gather that’s been completely disbanded now because there are so few members. And then on the internet, I use the internet quite, quite a lot on Facebook I came across this Bomber Command history forum and in the forum was somebody there call Dee mentioned the IBCC. You probably know about this lady, Dee.
DM: I’ve heard.
JD: You know about her. Well, she in fact put me in touch with the IBCC or reminded me because I’d been in touch before and I posted this question on Facebook and she came back and said she’d spoken to somebody at IBCC and they thought it was just over two thousand. But nobody really knows because no records have been kept have they?
DM: No. No.
JD: So, it’s all guesswork really but I think two or three, between two or three thousand is right. I mean immediately after the war there was something like a hundred and twenty thousand left. But the war, that’s what we are talking about? Getting on for seventy years ago now, aren’t we? So, there can’t be many left.
DM: No. Do, do —
JD: Yeah.
DM: Do you remember your time with Bomber Command with fondness or —
JD: With —?
DM: With fondness or —
JD: Yes. Well, it’s, no I don’t know about fondness. Yeah. I mean let’s be, let’s be honest it was a pretty scary time. Although as an individual I never felt that I was, I was going to get killed. I always thought that I was going to survive and I think this may have been due to the fact that when one is young, I was twenty or so you never think anything is going to happen to you. Well, obviously I was always optimistic. But I must confess that before each trip when we were sitting outside the aircraft waiting to get in and start the engines and they’d always happen for about a half an hour it then suddenly dawned on you what you are doing, you know. And then I do remember getting a bit apprehensive then. But once in the aircraft as the navigator I was busy from, you know the first, from the first minute as it were until the end of the trip. And that meant that one I was occupied and didn’t have time to think about you know being attacked. And it now, you know it’s occurred to me since that the other members of the crew sitting there staring out into the darkness they must have been petrified I should think most of the time but they obviously never mentioned it. Yes. I mean, I think probably a navigator in Bomber Command probably had the best job really because he was occupied as I say all the time and mark you one thing I missed was, was looking out of the aircraft and seeing what was happening all around us. Although, I did go up and I’d see. I used to get permission from the pilot to go up and stand by him when we were going in to the bombing run watching things happen and I think I wasn’t frightened at all. I was absolutely fascinated with what was going on, you know. And then of course you could see other aircraft all around you all being lit up and so on. So, yes it was something that one would never see again. Oh yes. I recall we did one trip early on in our tour. I think it was our second or third operation to Milan and that was quite an interesting trip because first of all it took almost nine and a half hours which was a hell of a long time. Secondly, the route took us over the Alps and we were flying on a bright moonlight night and it lit up the Alps dramatically and we were about I suppose the Alps go up to about fourteen or fifteen thousand feet and we were at sixteen so there wasn’t much between us you know because sixteen was about the maximum height, I think for a Halifax. Perhaps seventeen after a bit of a struggle. Anyway, we had a dramatic view. Fantastic view of the Alps both going and coming and then after we crossed the Alps we could see Milan in the distance because Milan is quite near the Alps, lit up and we could see searchlights waving. And then the nearer we got the searchlights stopped and when we got there we could also see anti-aircraft bursts in the sky and when we got there they completely stopped. So there were no searchlights and no anti-aircraft fire when we got there and I gather this was quite common that the Italians manning these things on the ground decided they’d leave, you know if we were there [laughs] Which was nice for us. So that was quite, I think we were meant to bomb some factories near, near the main railway station in Milan. And I gather according to the Bomber Command Diaries, you know that big fat book that the raid was very successful and we hit the factories. But that was quite an interesting trip. But on one I think on that same trip [pause] it was the same trip the pilot of a Stirling aircraft won the VC that night and it came, I’ve got a story upstairs about him. His name was Aaron, I think it was Aaron Smith. I’m not sure. But on the way, on the way down just before they got to Milan they were fired at by another Stirling aircraft and to this day nobody knows quite why the other Stirling aircraft did this because nobody owned up to it but it was presumed that the other Stirling aircraft just missed, he identified the other, you know the Stirling wrongly and took it to be an enemy aircraft. Anyway, he fired at this guy’s aircraft and he got badly badly injured and could no longer fly the aircraft. So the crew took him back and laid him down in the back of the aircraft and I think it was the [pause] I can’t remember whether it was either the flight engineer or the navigator took — no. It was the flight engineer. That’s right. He took over flying the aircraft because he had some instruction and they decided to abandon the bombing. So they released the bombs and they fell somewhere else. And then they decided that it would be dangerous to try and go back over the Alps to the UK and they decided to head for Sicily which was about I don’t know, I suppose and hundred and fifty miles south of where they thought they were. And then, oh yes the other thing was that the damage included putting out the radio. So they had no communication with the ground so they couldn’t find out where to land in Sicily. But eventually the wireless operator he managed to get some communication going with an aerodrome called Bone in North Africa. In Libya. And it was the only Allied air base in Libya at the time. Anyway, I don’t know how the wireless operator did it but he managed to speak to Bone and Bone said, ‘You must abandon the idea of trying to land in Sicily because there’s an invasion taking place and there’s a lot of fighting and we can’t advise you where to land.’ He said, they said, ‘You must try and head for Bone,’ and so they altered course and did that and eventually got there and this guy Aaron somebody, the pilot, he decided to get back in to the pilot’s seat to fly the aircraft and eventually he landed this aircraft despite the fact he was badly injured and he died nine hours later. And he got a VC for that. So that was quite an unfortunate dramatic ending for him. For the crew.
DM: Did you ever visit subsequently any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Did I ever —?
DM: Visit any of the cities that you bombed?
JD: Only Berlin. Yeah. I went to Berlin about five years or six years ago and of course the area which was bombed of course have you been to Berlin?
DM: No.
JD: No. The area that was bombed has been rebuilt but it’s instead of, it’s been rebuilt with mainly glass buildings. Very modern. So you get no, you get no sense of an area that was completely obliterated and it’s a, you know an interesting city but I think that they built they rebuilt most of it in glass or so. A mistake really because in other parts of Europe where cities have been rebuilt they’ve rebuilt particularly in France they’ve rebuilt them in the style they were originally. An example of that was Caen where Caen was effectively demolished by Montgomery in order to get his troops on the move as it were. At great cost to civilians living there. But after the war they rebuilt Caen as it was and to go there you’d never think a bomb had been dropped anywhere near. But that didn’t happen in Berlin unfortunately. There we are. Yeah. I can’t remember. No. I’ve not been to, oh yes I’ve been to Milan. Ah yes. Of course, I’ve been to Milan. Great place Milan. And we actually went to the, yes we flew to Milan. We were going to go to a place called Genoa in Italy. Or Genoa. I don’t know how you pronounce it. Genoa. And we flew to Milan and got on a train at Milan. So we actually went to Milan Station but there was obviously no evidence of the bombing so, but I’m impressed with Italian railways. Very cheap and very fast. Unlike the UK of course. So yes but I mean no in terms of visiting immediately after the war and this took place from Elvington we were instructed to do what were they called?
DM: Oh, are these the Cook’s Tours?
JD: Sorry.
DM: Cook’s Tours.
JD: That’s it.
DM: Yes.
JD: And we did two of these. We took, we took a number of people. I didn’t know who they were, I presumed they were VIPs of some kind over, we flew over the Ruhr and we flew over Essen and Mannheim and one or two other places very low. About we couldn’t have been more than about two or three hundred feet perhaps. No. A thousand. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But low enough to see the damage very effectively. So we did that and yeah, I think we were all taken aback by the immense amount of the damage which we’d caused and subsequently I didn’t realise then but in later years I realised that Bomber Command it did what it had to do and it was probably very necessary that we did what we had to do but what we had to do was quite barbaric. But I think that, I think we, I don’t think there was ever a question of whether we should have done it. I think we should have done it. What should have happened was for war to be avoided, I think. I’ve become very anti-war. I think a lot of people who took part in the war have. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean in London of course people suffered to a certain extent.
DM: Yeah. When you said that you grew up in Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Sorry?
DM: You said you grew up in sort of Edmonton and Middlesex.
JD: Yeah. I was out of London when the bombing took place but —
DM: Were your family still there or —
JD: No. No. None of my family live there now. No.
DM: Were they there during the war though?
JD: Oh, indeed. Sure. Yeah.
DM: So they all came through the bombing of London.
JD: They survived you know.
DM: Yeah.
JD: Because they weren’t in, they weren’t in central London. They were out in the suburbs. Wood Green which is a suburb and I don’t think, I don’t think any bombs were dropped there at all. No. It’s [pause] yes the I suppose you know since the war there’s been an enormous amount of literature hasn’t there and books written about Bomber Command. And I think that [pause] Well, I think that what we did played an enormous part in, in the defeat of Nazi Germany. I mean had that Bomber Command not done what it did then presumably all the German troops that were used for anti-aircraft purposes and I gather it totalled something like two million presumably those troops could have been released to fight elsewhere. Presumably against, on the Eastern Front against Russian and that might have made all the difference really. I don’t know. So, although I think what we did was, was not very nice I think it was completely and utterly necessary to get rid of this terrible scourge in Europe. And at the time of course when I was on the squadron I hadn’t really read very much about what was going on Germany. I don’t think many people had at that, at that stage because there wasn’t much news coming out of Germany in the nineteen, the late 1930s and early 40s. And as a young man I wasn’t as interested then as I am now in what happened in the past. So we were largely unaware of what was happening in Europe. But I remember having a feeling, you know then on the squadron that what we were doing was necessary. That we had to defeat these so and sos in Germany without really knowing about them. About all the horrors that were going on. But with that I don’t know we never spoke. Something we never discussed. I never remember discussing this with any of my colleagues. I think we were too busy thinking about other things like, you know going out to the pub or whatever or something like that you know.
DM: Yes.
JD: Very good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Eric Hatherly Dean
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ADeanJEH170913, PDeanJEH1701
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Pending review
Format
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01:03:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
North Africa
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Mannheim
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Milan
Saskatchewan--Swift Current
Saskatchewan
Description
An account of the resource
John Dean’s childhood memory of watching a Spitfire and a German aircraft having a dogfight in the sky above him spurred him to want to become a Spitfire pilot. He didn’t achieve his aim of becoming a Spitfire pilot and instead became a navigator. On one operation the Flight Engineer noticed the Lancaster immediately above them and then saw the bomb fall from it and in to their own aircraft from where the crew argued what to do with it. On his first operation he realised to his horror that he had turned the aircraft too early and they were far off target but they managed to rectify their mistake and complete the operation.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1940-08-15
1944-12
1945-01
1652 HCU
51 Squadron
77 Squadron
aircrew
bomb struck
bombing
Fw 190
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
navigator
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Stradishall
Spitfire
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/825/10810/AFosterIWE180221.1.mp3
54d33d809a599918158d50aa31c3512e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Foster, Ivor William Ernest
I W E Foster
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Ivor Foster (b. 1925, 1851250 Royal Air Force) his logbook, a squadron daily order of battle and photographs of operation Exodus in 1945. He flew operations as an air gunner with 186 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ivor Foster and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Foster, IWE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RP: This interview is taking place on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The Interviewer Is Rod Pickles. The Interviewee is Ivor Foster. Also present in the room is Bill Nicholson. The interview is taking place at Ivor’s home in Plymstock, Plymouth on the 21st of February 2018. Good morning, Ivor and thank you for inviting me to your home. Could we start then by if you could tell us when and where you were born and what made you join the RAF?
IF: I was born in Stonehouse, Plymouth. What was called Edgcumbe Street. Then it became Union Street. And that was the 16th of August 1925. And I went to High Street School in Stonehearst and at the age of eleven I went to Public Central in Corporate Street having passed what is today the 11 Plus and I left there at fifteen and a half and I had various jobs until I was eligible at eighteen to volunteer. And I volunteered for the RAF, and I got called at eighteen and a quarter and I went up, after the medical I went to the Lord’s Cricket Ground and reported to the RAF to start my service. And then I left the, I left the hotel there with a number of others and we were put on the train to Newquay in Cornwall where I did six weeks there ITW and it was all training for pilot, navigator and bomb aimer and I decided that, they would, they would go abroad after, after another six weeks so I decided that I would change over and become an air gunner. So I sent, I was sent to [unclear] at a place called Eastchurch and remustered there as an air gunner. And then I started my training and I ended up after another ITW, on air gunner training. I went to Northern Ireland to a place called Bishop’s Court and after three months there I came home on a week’s leave as a sergeant air gunner. And at the end of that leave I joined, what was it? Five others and we crewed up as a crew in a Wellington. And after our training there we ended up north at a place called Woolfox Lodge and we went on the mighty Lanc and picked up our engineer.
RP: Do you remember the crewing up procedure? The crewing up procedure. Did you, how did you choose each other then? Who chose the people?
IF: That’s a good one because all trades of aircrew were in a big hangar and the commanding officer came in and said, ‘Right. You will talk amongst yourself and crew up amongst yourself. Nobody is going to tell you you’ve got to go to this pilot or that pilot. You pick yourself.’ And he said, ‘I’ll be back at mid-day and the pilot will give me his crew that he’s formed and any of them that are not in a crew in the afternoon will come back and I shall be here and then you will be ordered to go to this crew or that crew.’ And that’s how we crewed up. I first of all picked up a gunner. He turned out to be our rear gunner for the rest of our service. Then we picked up the pilot and from there we carried on picking up the rest of the crew. The bomb aimer, wireless operator, navigator and like I say we say we went then after flying on Wellington to Woolfox Lodge where we picked up the engineer because we went from two engines obviously to four and he had a job to look after those four engines and had to move the petrol around the wings so that we weren’t caught short of petrol. But then finishing all of our training on the Lancaster we ended up at RAF Stradishall, 186 Squadron and that’s where we started our operations bombing Germany.
RP: Can you remember your first sortie?
IF: Yes. I can. I’ve got it in my book here. It was a place Wesel. W E S E L. And it was lovely keeping this logbook. I refer to it time and time again because a lot of it is just like yesterday. Yes. That was on the 18th of February ’45.
RP: So, you did quite a lot of training before then.
IF: Oh yes.
RP: You must have done over a years training at least.
IF: Yes. Yes. I I started my actual training before I went to the Air Gunner’s Training Unit in Ireland, Northern Ireland. And that was the first time I’ve ever flown an aeroplane and it was the Anson and my pilot was called Sergeant Hedges and lo and behold he came from Plymouth.
RP: Oh right.
IF: That was my initiation into flying. And that, it took us, well it took me from that day, right up to when we first went on as a bombing crew and it took me ‘til [pause – pages turning] That’s Woolfox Lodge finish. Here we are, 14th, no, the 18th of February was my first bombing trip to Wesel.
RP: Do you remember much about it?
[pause]
IF: Apart from well, the first one I wondered what I was going into. I know we entered in “Light flak,” but there was puffs of smoke coming up everywhere. But there again I was told by one of the old colleagues of aircrew on the station, ‘Don’t worry about those puffs of smoke. That shell’s gone away from you.’ He said, ‘It’s the ones that you can’t see.’
RP: Yeah.
IF: That’s not a puff of smoke ‘til it hits you.’ But [pause] Yeah. It’s [pause] I don’t remember. You know, I say I don’t remember. It was all new. Everything was new and things were going so fast. Going out to, being driven out to the plane, jumping in, taking off and that and then finding being a day lighter because that’s what our, our station supplied unless they wanted to do a bit more strength at night and we did a couple of nights during my period there. It was everything going on around you and of course as an air gunner you’re looking all the way around and I had the best view of the lot on the top turret because I could see everywhere. I could see everywhere. But then after you’d done the first one they seemed to slot in and each one’s the same until something happens and if it happens close to you and the plane goes down, you know you realise then you’re in with it.
RP: Because you’re not, you know, the people on the plane.
IF: Yeah.
RP: Yeah.
IF: And of course, being on top as well you’re looking for our boys up over you and they would drift over with their bomb doors opened and it’s not a very nice sight looking up at someone else’s bombs ready to come out.
RP: Did you ever have to take avoiding action?
IF: I did that. I said, my pilot wrote a book on it and he thanked me. He said, ‘I’ve got to thank you twice for making me dive to get away from those up above us.
RP: Oh, that was good.
IF: Well, it so happens and yet you see at night you wouldn’t have seen that.
RP: No.
IF: And there was a number of crews lost with bombers over them. But one of the, one of the, well I say the best trips that I ever saw, it was an eye opener, is when I took part in a thousand bomber raid and we were a hundred and fifty from what we called 3 Group which was, like I say day lighters and we were, we were in formation and gaining height on a Sunday afternoon. A beautiful sunny afternoon. Better than what we get today. And we were over Southampton circling and we knew there was going to be a thousand and fifty bombers. We were a hundred and fifty and I can still hear now the bomb aimer sat down in his little cubicle down and under saying, he said, ‘Here they come underneath us.’ And there was nine hundred and they were, the ground was just blackened out with aircraft.
RP: It must have been an impressive sight from where you were then.
IF: Oh, my dear. All going the same way. But then when the last one, this wonderful timing and why a film was never made of a thousand bomber raid I’ll never know. And as the last crew left the shores of England at Southampton we set course as well.
RP: Where were you heading?
IF: We were [pause] we were going to Essen. That was it. Essen, we went. That was on the 11th of March ’45 and we, being day lighters we used to bomb on radar. That’s why we were in formation. But I don’t think there was much else left of Essen for us to bomb by the time we got there and how there wasn’t more accidents I don’t know. But wonderful planning.
RP: Yeah.
IF: Wonderful planning.
RP: But obviously there was a few shot down, I assume. Was there?
IF: Oh, I expect so. I didn’t know of the, you know we —
RP: But you, you returned safely. Yeah.
IF: We were number one.
RP: Yeah.
IF: We, it’s terrible really to say it but you look after yourself.
RP: Yeah.
IF: People then realise that there’s seven in a crew. The number of times people say, ‘Oh, you must have been frightened.’ You’ve got no time to be frightened because the seven of you have ate, slept, drank, worked, played as one. You were like brothers and it was like a chain. You couldn’t afford to be that weak link because if you were you’ve put six others in peril. And that I think sums up most bomber crews. It’s a wonderful feeling to be one of them but there’s a lot of responsibility for each one carrying to think that his work on that plane is saving six others. Not just yourself.
RP: Yeah. Well, it’s the comradeship, isn’t it?
IF: Oh, wonderful.
RP: So, that, you mentioned the first one and the thousand bomber raids. What was your last bombing raid? Where was that too then? Where you were going to?
IF: Oh, now that one —
RP: I know you moved on to other things which we can talk about but can you remember where the last bombing raid was too? And did you know at the time it was your last bombing raid?
IF: No. No. We didn’t. My last bombing raid took place on the 24th of April and we went to a place called Bad Oldeslow, near Lubeck and we went for marshalling yards on that one.
RP: But you were only what, a couple of weeks away from the end of the war by then, weren’t you?
IF: Yes. Oh, yeah.
RP: But did they tell you when you got back you wouldn’t have to go again or what?
IF: No. No.
RP: When did you find out?
IF: Nothing was told. Nothing was told until we heard that the war was over and then that was the 24th of April. Then the 7th of May was my first trip to the Hague in Holland and we were flying five hundred feet dropping food to the Dutch.
RP: This, this is a different kind of sortie now [laughs]
IF: There was a, we always said as a crew that sortie, dropping food to the Dutch people and the four trips we did to Juvencourt in France and brought back twenty four each time of our own boys who had been prisoners of war we were doing something for humanity. We were no longer destroying. We were bringing good to people. The prisoners of war coming back and we, we found out one big lesson. Our first trip bringing them back we were talking to them as they were coming to the plane. Some of them went and kissed the grass. Some of them just knelt down and prayed. We walked away on the next three. That was their life. They’d come back to soil that they had belonged to. That was very very touching —
RP: Yeah.
IF: Believe you me to see a man —
RP: I mean the good thing was to get them back so quickly, wasn’t it?
IF: Oh, oh yes. It was. And I got photographs there where when we landed we lined up all the way up one side of the runway and when we, when we finished taking the prisoners, or ex boys away we, when we flew to Juvencourt we lined up and when we were given the allocation everything was [unclear] who they were coming in whose plane. Obviously, they had to get details of everything in case something did go wrong. And then they’d come to our plane and we seated them then as best we could. And when we got back to Juvencourt and that we’d walk away having brought the plane in to a dispersal or the side of the airfield and they walked away. And later we would go back, pick up our plane and take off and fly back to base. Very very moving. Unless you’ve been there to experience that, to see men, you know not boys but men and some of them old men —
RP: Yeah.
IF: I know we had twenty four ex-prisoners of war was Indians our second trip. Wonderful. Wonderful to see them putting feet on England.
RP: So how many trips did do to Holland on Operation Manna then?
IF: One.
RP: Just the one.
IF: We did the one and then we got called to do these.
RP: And then you had to go and recover —
IF: Bring our boys back because they they wanted to get them back quick.
RP: Yes.
IF: And of course, they wanted, they had other ones that hadn’t been to Holland dropping food so they went.
RP: Yeah.
IF: And we were shifted then to bringing our boys back which was a —
RP: Yeah. By the 7th of May of course the Allied Army would be moving in to Holland, wouldn’t it?
IF: Oh yeah.
RP: They’d surrendered. So, things would be a little better. So, you mentioned when you crewed up initially. When you actually finished how many of the original crew were, were you together? Were you still the same people?
IF: No. When we, when we crewed up we had unfortunately, he was a nice lad from Canada and he was our first navigator but during training they found he couldn’t navigate properly.
RP: Oh right.
IF: Something went wrong with him and we didn’t know what. He was just taken away and we were given then another navigator.
RP: Oh.
IF: And the navigator we got then, old [Jerry] I was a boy eighteen nineteen. Nineteen I was then and he was thirty two. But he was a wizard at navigation and his flight plans, very very small writing but you could read every letter and every number on it.
RP: So, in reality you got a better navigator because of that.
IF: Yes, we did.
RP: Yeah.
IF: We did. But at the end of the day, and I can still see him now as soon as my pilot, he was the last one to leave the plane when we came back, we would be there having a cigarette. He never smoked. As soon as he put his foot down on the grass, he’d step on the grass on the tarmac and he’d say, ‘Well, boys lady luck’s been with us today.’ And that’s what it was. Luck.
RP: Did you have any, were you ever, suffer any damage on your sorties then?
IF: Well, we had one burst quite near us but I was the only one that caught a bit of that one. But it went right through my turret. A bit of shrapnel.
RP: Oh right.
IF: Come in one side, behind me luckily and went out the other side. Ripped the back of my Mae West. The bolt’s there that keeps your head up when you’re in the water.
RP: That was close.
IF: But I had six slithers of Perspex around this eye because I was facing to the rear and they took me down. You’d think I was a wounded soldier but because of the height and the cold and there was slight trickles of blood from where these splinters went in I had to be protected from frostbite and that. So, yeah. But there, I’m here like.
RP: Oh good [laughs] Yeah.
IF: Still got my eye as well.
RP: That’s the main thing. Did you ever shoot anybody down then from your turret?
IF: No.
RP: Did anyone else? And of the —
IF: I never never fired my gun all the time we were flying. Or the rear, rear gunner
RP: Really.
IF: No. We did see one time on one of our trips there was a flash went beside. Whoof gone. And we thought then that was a jet. They were just bringing in the German jet fighters and we thought it was one of them because we’d never seen anything like it. Just a red flash and it was gone. If you wanted to open your gun you couldn’t —
RP: Yes.
IF: Because it was gone so fast.
RP: So, you’ve come back from the POWs. At what point after that did you disband then? When did it come to an end?
IF: It come to an end, our last trip, I think [pause] Hang on. I’ll soon tell you when we [pause] My pilot’s got all that in his book. He wrote a book about it. It was, “Ghosts of Targets Past,” by Philip Gray. [pause] Our last trip. That’s when we went to 622 Squadron to join them from 186 to train to go to Japan but the war finished. That stopped that. Our last flight was on the 3rd of August.
RP: Oh right.
IF: That was a night cross country and a couple of days after that the seven of us walked in different directions and that was it. I ended up ten months, eleven months in Iraq. RAF Habbaniya. I’ll always remember it. Fifty five miles from Baghdad.
RP: What were you doing out there?
IF: Well, they put so many of us to train as equipment assistants. I was one of them and we had this exam and then you were then an AC1 equipment assistant. And I got sent out there as an equipment assistant and believe it or not I was in charge of a bakery, butchery and slaughterhouse. We used to kill the meat because there was over two thousand of the local population that were like an Army out there. They did all the guard duty around the camp and all that. And there was a terrific number of our lads and women there because they had their own hospital there. It was like a little town really. There were shops there. But the big thing, there was, they had their own electricity works there and it was five civilians manned that twenty four hours a day. Made their own ice and that for the camp. And if, I remember I got my move from there. I had to come back what they called [Medlock]. That was a shaker. I flew from Habbaniya down to the Canal, Suez Canal and put in a camp there all under canvas. Then we were taken and we got on a boat and we went what they called [Medlock] and that boat took us to Piraeus in Greece and then we went to the south of France, got on the train, hopped to Calais and then across to England. That’s how I come home.
RP: That must have taken a few days.
IF: The trains, they were, they were slats to sit on and we were about twenty four hours coming from the south of France off the camp.
RP: Ok.
IF: Yeah.
RP: So, after that, how, how long before you were demobbed then?
IF: Oh [pause] I did, I did a fair time down, down in Honington. Dunkeswell. The station just outside Honington.
RP: Oh yeah.
IF: And I got the, I’ll tell you when I got demobbed because I’ve got my book here. I think it was the [pause – pages turning] I went overseas in August ’45 and come back. [unclear] if that. The 28th of December. Came back the 3rd of November. But I got demobbed. I think that was my last day in the RAF was 6th of the 7th ’47.
RP: Gosh. That was —
IF: Yeah.
RP: That was long after the war.
IF: Yeah. Yeah. It was.
RP: Looking back on the time when you were the, when you were the gunner and going on all these sorties if you had your time again would you do it all again?
IF: If I had the same crew. Yeah.
RP: Did you keep in touch with any of them afterwards?
IF: Yes. Yeah. We kept in touch and unfortunately the first one that passed away was our wireless operator. He was walking. He came from Hayes in Middlesex. Always remember it. “Home of His Master’s Voice,” was the railway station there. And he had a heart attack whilst he was out walking. He went. Our engineer, believe it or not when he joined us and don’t forget we were nineteen and twenty and that, he was forty two. A grandfather. Poor old Frank came from Tiverton. He passed away when he was fifty so he didn’t have much of a retirement. And the last one to go was my pilot. He emigrated with his wife to New Zealand. Was out there thirty years and he lost her. Then he emigrated to Toronto and that’s where my wife and myself used to visit him.
RP: So, you have spoken to him.
IF: Oh yeah. And I lost my wife six year ago. And I, I went out in 2013. I couldn’t go the following year and that was the year that he passed away. And the friends he introduced me to out there I still keep in touch. The last time I went there was 2016.
RP: Oh, that’s good.
IF: Didn’t go last year. But, yeah I’ve got my memories and a lot of it is just like yesterday. I now, I can now tell you about my two gripes.
RP: Go on then.
IF: The worst one affects all aircrew is the fact that we never got our Bomber Command medal. And also our the head of Bomber Command, we always knew him as Bomber Harris and I’ll never forget there was a photograph up over the doorway. There was only one door into the room where we got briefed and it said words under, “If he says you go. You go.” But yes. He never got any recognition and we were never mentioned on Mr Churchill’s victory speech. And only, you know, not getting the Bomber Command medal it’s all them boys that came over and helped us during the war.
RP: Well, yes. Its —
IF: All the Commonwealth lads.
RP: It’s a worldwide thing, isn’t it?
IF: Australia, New Zealand, Canada just to name a few of them.
RP: Well, campaigns are running. Let’s hope we get there.
IF: Yeah.
RP: [unclear]
IF: Yeah. That’s one. And the other big thing was having been promoted warrant officer and two months later demoted to sergeant and if serving twelve months after that be demoted to the rank I joined, I think that was a big downfall of the RAF.
RP: Did anyone ever try to explain that to you?
IF: Nobody ever explained it. It was an Air Ministry order and from the date of that order that’s when that ruling took effect. I held my rank for about two months.
RP: That’s very strange.
IF: Yeah. And really speaking being out, being serving then in Iraq where I was in charge of a number of the natives working in the bakery, and the butchery and the slaughterhouse and one day I’m sir —
RP: Yeah.
IF: And the next day they see me with three stripes, sergeant it was a little bit degrading.
RP: Yeah.
IF: Yeah.
RP: I find that, yeah. Well, I think we’ve, we’ve covered your time in Bomber Command which has been a privilege to listen to and I’d just like to say thank you for talking to me.
IF: Oh, thank you.
RP: It’s been tremendous. Thank you.
[recording paused]
RP: Now, this is an add on to Ivor Foster’s interview. He’s got a couple of events that he’d like to discuss. Ivor.
IF: Yes. The [pause] It’s gone again. My mind’s gone blank.
[recording paused]
IF: On one of our trips we had a bit of airy scary. It was about the third trip I think we were making and we started taking off and unfortunately the old Lanc started to swing to port and the pilot couldn’t, couldn’t correct it. So he got the bomb aimer, the engineer to push the forward throttles through what they called the gate and they could only go through there for so long because the full power went on the engine and you can’t gun them too long before they’ll burn out and we were heading for the biggest hangar that we ever saw and we just managed to scrape over. And when we got the other side the rear gunner said we had sunk down a bit but after that we couldn’t stop the blinking plane from climbing. And when we got back to the station nobody mentioned a word about it.
RP: That’s strange.
IF: Like as if it never happened. But the rear gunner, he said he saw one man on his bike pedalling like hell going through this hangar because the other door was open the other side see. So that was that one.
RP: And you were going to tell us about the D-Day medal, I think.
IF: Oh yes. You see all those that flew from the beginning of the war up to D-Day they were awarded the Aircrew Europe. Unfortunately, it was stopped and after D-Day you got the normal medals that they gave you. The same as they gave the Army and the Navy. But what the powers that be never realised was as our troops were coming up through and taking over France and what have you Hitler was pulling all these anti-aircraft guns and all these fighter stations away from France and other areas and putting them around the big cities in the Ruhr. So, by the time we were there bombing various cities in the Ruhr the defence of the Ruhr instead of what it was before D-Day was doubled. All the, all the guns and that were brought up from France and placed all around so we were hitting targets there which was heavily defended to what it was prior to France capitulating. Or France being captured this time.
RP: Yeah. Yeah.
IF: No.
RP: Ok. Thank you.
IF: Thank you. Now —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ivor William Ernest Foster
Creator
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Rod Pickles
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFosterIWE180221
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:33:09 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ivor Foster of Plymouth volunteered for the RAF as soon as he was of age. He was initially accepted for training to become a Pilot, navigator or bomb aimer but decided the length of time for the training was too long and chose to train as a gunner. He was posted to 186 Squadron as a mid-upper gunner and took part in operational flying and Operation Manna and Operation Exodus. On one operation a piece of shrapnel broke through his turret and ripped his Mae West. Pieces of shrapnel were embedded around his eye but he was otherwise unhurt. After every operation the pilot would descend from the Lancaster, stand on the tarmac and say, ‘Well, boys lady luck has been with us today.’ After his tour Ivor was posted to Habbaniya as an equipment assistant.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-11
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Iraq
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Suffolk
Germany--Essen
Contributor
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Julie Williams
186 Squadron
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Stradishall
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/908/11150/PKentAW1701.2.jpg
c9ec5bbbd87ecfe7d5cb1559f5f95eb5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/908/11150/AKentAW170202.2.mp3
6ae3878d734d5f9765f038ab5e2fd409
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Kent, Anthony William
A W Kent
Description
An account of the resource
A oral history interview with Flying Officer Anthony 'Tony' Kent (1923 -2021, 189184 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 149 Squadron from RAF Methwold.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Kent, AW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
NM: Good morning. My name is Nigel Moore. It’s Thursday the 2nd of February 2017. I’m with Tony Kent in his house XXXXX Ruislip, Middlesex. So Tony, tell me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and where you went to school.
AK: It goes back really. I was born over in Wood Green and a lot of my education was split up between Wood Green and Leicester because my father had a summer job there and then we came back to Wood Green or later Eltham. A similar sort of thing until finally we settled in Eltham and my education was, I finished up in a central, central school at Ruislip er at Eltham but I sat for competitive student apprentice situation and took that up on the Monday after war was declared on the Sunday. Now, as the student, the apprenticeship was based at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich it soon became clear that I was not going to get a good machine education operating in the Arsenal and then going to the Woolwich Polytechnic for further studies. It was soon clear that I was sent out to a drawing office in the country and I was out there for some time and decided, after about eighteen months that that was not for me. I did not want to spend my life as a design draughtsman because that’s where I was heading. Design draughtsmanship. And I, it was a protected industry but I managed to be one of the last people of that ilk who managed to get out and I volunteered for the RAF. My RAF training, in the main, we were sent, initial training was in Scarborough and then eventually I was taken out on [pause] on the sea, troop transport carrier, to South Africa where I trained as a navigator at East London. And I was there for about a year and then was brought, brought back to England and started. And we crewed up at Stradishall where, as I expect you probably know, they put a whole heap of crew members in there. Pilots, air gunners etcetera etcetera. And a pilot went around asking people would they like, would we like, to join his crew. And Alan, my pilot, was from Adelaide. Australian. And we had two Scottish gunners and a Geordie engineer and one other. So from then on we went on to, Alan went on to training on the twin engine Wellington at Stradishall. Switched to Stirlings. And joined, well and then joined the 149 Squadron who we’d volunteered for, or at least asked for because they were known as a special squadron and their work was dropping supplies and agents into Europe. Well we were with those Stirling, a Stirling squadron and we did three operations from there. Bomb laying, mine laying, sorry. Mine laying. Then we were given the Lancs and we were operating from Methwold. Previously we’d been operating from, I call it Feltwell but there was 146 something Grove I’ve got the name but thirty of my operations were with Lancs at Methwold. Mainly daylight. We were then after a while, I could give you dates, we were equipped with GH and I think we were probably the first squadron to get it. Have you heard of GH?
NM: No. Tell me about it.
AK: Well GH was, was like a satnav of the sky. Germany, or Europe was covered in a sort of range of criss-crossing lines. Whether you’d call them radio waves or not and with using that equipment I could navigate with it obviously but when we first had it we had mainly daylights and in the daylight operations we would have two other Lancs formate with us and we would lead them in. I would navigate when we got near the run-in to the target. I would then take over the run-in and instructing Alan and I had previously set up the setting of the point at which the bombs would be released. Pre-calculated at the briefing and we would run down one of these lines, there’s a better word, run down one of these lines and my aircraft would be seen as a blob running down. As we got near the target a blob would appear on one of the crossing points and as we got near that I would order the bomb doors open. Two other aircraft would then do the same thing. As we got to this particular point of bomb release I’d press the bomb tit. First bombs went. The other two aircraft released their bombs so we were going as triple, triple bombing range. The beauty of it from our point of view was that we could bomb through ten tenths cloud. We didn’t need to see the target with this thing at all which was quite a benefit because it was very difficult for the German fighter pilots to get up through ten tenths cloud and find their way back home. So we, that was our, that was most of the work we did once we had the GH was daylight and leading in to other aircraft. We did that until we finished our operations virtually. We didn’t always do this. Sometimes we did night operations in a gaggle. Not leading anybody in but that, that we, as I say we did thirty operations in the Lanc and three in the Stirlings. Then after that we weren’t wanted bomber crew and I switched to Transport Command. From Transport Command and the experience I got there I came and joined British European Airways and spent the rest of my life with the airline. British Airways. Finished up as a senior man. Senior planning manager at Heathrow.
NM: Ok. Ok. Fascinating. Fascinating.
AK: Now, there were one or two, shall we say, interesting points during all these operations. One of them — we had to move to Woodbridge. It was a very very fierce winter and we were, we positioned to Woodbridge which was a massive great airfield right on the coast. On one of these daylight operations from there we we turned and taxied. Oh. As, as the bombs were released it was the bomb aimer or engineer’s job to go down the fuselage to check at each button that the bombs had gone and we taxied in to our station, bomb doors open. Ground crew flat on their faces because a bomb had dropped out flat, fortunately. What had happened was it looked as if it had released but it was so frozen up that it stayed there but it looked as if it had gone and of course eventually it did drop down into, in to the bomb bay. That was one interesting thing. Our very last trip we, it was quite a long one but, when we, we’d been briefed and we were in the aircraft and I was testing the GH screen it was snow-flaking. I was getting a lot of interference. Snow-flaking. So I called the ground staff and they switched one. I still was getting snow-flaking on it. And this took up so much time that I realised that even if we took off with this and saw how it was in the air, which was a suggestion from the squadron, I couldn’t make the rendezvous point to turn on to the route and across Europe. So I asked could I be allowed to navigate over, across London and I was given permission to navigate across London and make the turning point and join up with the rest of the gaggle at night. That trip was, was quite exciting in a way because when we came back the — we couldn’t land. We were diverted to St Mawgan’s because of weather. Right across down to Newquay and Alan, we landed safely and got to the end of the runway and the engines cut. We’d run out of fuel. It was as close as that. Alan never, didn’t say a word at the time but he must have been having his fingers crossed. But that, that was quite a trip. We did have other, one other but it wasn’t on an operation. We were doing bomb training using Ely Cathedral as a, as a bombing target. And that was, you know, the bomb aimer was in control of that and when he thought he’d got it right he pressed, pressed the button for a photograph and that was checked to see how accurate he was. Now we were supposed to be at eight thousand feet for this and there was a Polish crew who were supposed to be at twelve thousand but they weren’t. And Alan, in the split second, saw them coming straight at us. They went, he put the nose down, they went over the top of us and their propeller screwed through our port tail. Hell of a bang. I didn’t. There was a hell of a bang and then there was a silence in the aircraft until I said, ‘What the hell was that?’ And then Alan called down to the rear gunner and said to Jock, ‘How are you? Are you alright?’ And he, ‘Yes Skip. ’ God knows what, how he’d, what he was feeling. But because of the damage to the tail plane Alan, I had to give Alan a course for home obviously and he had to steer home using the ailerons on the, on the wings. We landed safely but the Polish crew crash landed and there was very careful checking of the logs as to what height were we at, what height were they at. Well fortunately my log was written out. Eight thousand feet. So that was the nearest we got, ever got, to not making it.
NM: And that was, they were over, over England. Let me take you back. When you decided to leave your apprenticeship.
AK: Yes.
NM: Why did you choose the RAF as opposed to the army or the navy?
AK: I wanted to be a pilot.
NM: You wanted to be a pilot. Ok.
AK: Yes. As it happened I went, I did go on the testing and did some training on the Tiger Moths and quite a lot of others as well. And then they called out all the names they wanted for pilots and Tony Kent’s name was the first one as a navigator. I missed being a pilot by one. Probably saved my life. [laughs]
NM: So, but did they choose navigator for you or did you, did you volunteer to become a navigator after your —?
AK: I volunteered for the air force.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Hoping to be a pilot.
NM: Right. But how did you, when you, when you weren’t selected as a pilot did they then say you are going to be a navigator?
AK: I was already in the air force then.
NM: Yeah but —
AK: Sworn in.
NM: But as a navigator or a flight engineer? How did you become a navigator as opposed to any other crew member?
AK: Because that was the next one on the list. They then did all the pilots. Then they called out how many navigators they wanted.
NM: Right.
AK: The rest were air gunners and that sort of thing.
NM: So they selected you —
AK: There wasn’t any choice.
NM: Right.
AK: Yeah.
NM: And how did you feel about that at the time?
AK: Not, not too bad actually. Not too bad. I was a little disappointed obviously ‘cause you know the pilot was the thing if you wanted to be in the air force but as it turned out it was, it was a very interesting job. In fact you were, as a navigator you worked damned hard and I think it seemed to suit me. I’m not so sure whether I would have been a good pilot or not. I had, hadn’t really got the feel for it. When I was training I never really felt that I’d got good control of the aircraft. I mean, yes I put it in to spins and stalled and that kind of thing. I could do all that. It was the actual landing and assessment of the height of the aircraft over the runway as I was going in. I did, I did that two or three times reasonably well but obviously not well enough to make the top. Top list. And I was, I just took it. I just took it and that was it. I was going to be a navigator.
NM: Did you actually get to fly solo as a pilot?
AK: No.
NM: During your training?
AK: No. No. I asked to but they said no. [laughs] I asked if I, I asked if I could go. I would have been prepared to go solo but they weren’t prepared to let me [laughs]. When I first met Alan he he said — he showed me a picture of a great heap in the middle of a field. He said, ‘I did that.’ He’d crash landed his Tiger Moth. I thought that was a pretty good [invitation] to a bloke who was going to be your pilot. Yeah. But in fact he was a very very good pilot and when he went back to Adelaide he became part of a display team. Aerobatics etcetera. Yeah. We stayed, we were very great friends, we stayed. We went out. Being in British Airways I could get out to Australia and my brother emigrated to Australia and so, and Alan was in Adelaide. We visited two or three times but he, unfortunately he and Sammy the wireless operator have both died of cancer through being heavy smokers. Some years ago now.
[pause]
AK: I don’t know whether I skipped too briefly over the —
NM: We can go back. That’s fine.
MS: Tony told me that he had to record in the flight which might be like up to six hours or something. Every six minutes he had to re-plot the course so he had to be not —
AK: The longest flight we did was just over seven hours to a place near Leipzig and every six minutes was hard work for seven hours believe me.
NM: Yes. It must be.
[pause]
NM: Your training. Navigation training in South Africa. You say you were there for about a year.
AK: Yes.
NM: What was?
AK: We were flying Ansons piloted by the South African pilots who weren’t that very enthusiastic about us. I think they were the Dutch South Africans.
NM: Right.
AK: Because they weren’t particularly friendly but you just got on and did your navigating really. That was, of course the Anson was a very slow plundering aircraft and I mean, if you couldn’t navigate that you, you were hard up. My log shows me as an average navigator but my instructor told me that I came third out of about two hundred. Average. You had to be average. You could hardly be anything else because you had no, you hadn’t really been tested in a proper service in wartime.
[pause]
AK: I’m trying to think how much I can tell you. I had two pals joined up with me. One of them, it was very tragic, one got blown out of the sky with flak hitting the bomb bay and the other one it was almost the end of the war and you know the Netherlands had the sea wall blasted and they were going in dropping at low level. Dropping supplies, and the engines cut and went in. I don’t. I never found out the facts because his father didn’t want to talk to me about it. He was so upset. He was the only son. And when I went to see him he said, ‘Tony, I can’t talk to you. ’ He was that upset. To go that way of all ways, you know when you’re doing something like that.
NM: Yeah. Humanitarian effort at the end. So you came back from South Africa and you went to Stradishall where you flew.
AK: Yeah we crewed up.
NM: You crewed up.
AK: And then went to Stradishall.
NM: So when you crewed up, you described it already but who chose who? Did you?
AK: The pilot chose his crew.
NM: Ok.
AK: He just went around. He just came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to be, would you like to join me as my navigator?’ And I just said, ‘Yes. Sure.’ Anyway, he seemed perfectly alright and how do you say no? [laughs]
NM: That’s right.
AK: But, yes. It turned out to be a nice combination. We were good friends.
[pause]
NM: From a navigator’s perspective how do you compare the Wellington and the Stirling and the Lancaster?
AK: Wellington was a good aircraft and we didn’t have that much, we didn’t have many hours flying hours with it before we were converted. The Stirling was a menace. Fine for the navigator. Lovely big office. But I expect you’ve probably heard the Stirling had a very high undercarriage and on take-off there was tremendous torque and it wasn’t unusual for the aircraft to take off at forty five degrees to the runway with the torque. And our first operation, with mines on board went, was over the top of a hangar. It was really that bad. When all my, when the tour was over and I was going out to what is now Karachi. What did we go out on? A Stirling. And one or two of us looked at each other and sure enough we went out at about forty five degrees off the runway. It was a menace from that point of view and you were forbidden to be, the front gunner was forbidden to be in that aircraft as it was landing and taking off but particularly landing. Yeah. I did it. It was quite an experience. [laughs]
NM: And how about the Lancaster?
AK: But the Lanc — I mean, you know, you can’t say enough about the Lanc. It was great from my point of view. It as a navigator it was everything, you know, it had everything I needed and as it said it really was the, turned the war in our favour undoubtedly. That aircraft. Massive rate of loss initially on the air raids. I was a little bit later. Missed the worst of it but still lost two pals at the same time and one or two on the squadron but the fact that we could operate over cloud in daylight was quite something. Strangely enough my senior, one of my senior manager in British Airways was a squadron leader. Spitfire pilot. And we became good friends and decided one day we’d have a look at our logbooks and it turned out his squadron escorted us on daylights three times. Yeah. It’s a small world.
NM: Small world. So how would you compare navigating daylight raids versus night raids?
AK: It didn’t make much difference to me. Daylights of course at least I could see, put my head out and see things around us but that wasn’t always clever because it wasn’t funny to see you running into the target with a lot of grey puffs of smoke right over the target we were running into. But no. Mainly you just had to keep your head down and work all the time until, you know. I signed my log off and waited for Alan to touch down. You really had no, no break from it at all. Day or, day or night.
NM: So as a crew who decided to join 149 squadron? Was it, was it Alan the Skipper or was it all of you together?
AK: Well Alan had heard that this was a special squadron and volunteered for it. Yeah. As I say our understanding was it was for dropping people and supplies into Europe. Well we didn’t do that at all. We, of the three operations we did with the Stirling they were all mine laying. The most exciting ones. We did one laying, a timed, we did a timed one from the coast and laid mines in front of the maintenance, submarine maintenance base in the Bay of Biscay. Another one was a low level run in to Brest. Again, dropping, dropping mines. I think, I think that was a night operation. In fact I’m almost sure it was because I seem to remember the flak.
[Pause. Pages turning]
AK: That’s right.
[Pause. Pages turning]
AK: [Can’t find it?] [pause] Yeah. It was night. Four hour thirty job. Four mines we dropped in. Yeah.
NM: So you were initially flying from Feltwell were you before you moved to Methwold?
AK: Methwold. Yes. Initially we, and then, and then we switched to Methwold with the Lancs. Yeah.
NM: So what was the feeling on the squadron when you converted to Lancasters from Stirlings?
AK: Hurray [laughs]. As far as I was concerned — hurray. Yes it was and as I say the Stirling was a lumbering great thing and it was just once we got used to the Lanc we just realised just what a, what a super aircraft they were.
NM: So what was station life like at Methwold? Can you —?
AK: Very good. Very nice atmosphere. We always got our eggs and chips after, after a trip [laughs] and I think it was a dash of rum in our tea as we were being debriefed. There was one, this is a side story altogether. Our squadron. I know we weren’t on it, were targeted. Were sent out to hit a rocket launching site on the French coast. Near Calais I think it was. That proved unsuccessful because that was covered in ten tenths. They couldn’t do it. They were told to return home but jettison the bombs in to The Channel and on the debriefing a rear gunner said that he had seen a light aircraft going into the sea. That was the day that Glen Miller went missing and that was, I would say that’s, that was more or less certainly his aircraft that went in and the pilot should not have been there. He’d been given a different route and he was not, not on that route.
NM: So do you think he was brought down by a jettisoned bomb? Do you think he was hit by a bomb that had been jettisoned? Or —
AK: Must have been. Must have been.
NM: Ok. Interesting.
AK: But an awful lot of bombs were going down at that time in a smallish area. But as I say we were not on that operation. No. When, when we had this mid-air collision of course Alan did a mayday —mayday and this was at night obviously and when he, you know, he landed, they had everything, everything ready for us running alongside us as we landed but we were ok and you know that that was great. They looked after us and debriefed us very carefully on that one.
NM: So what about when you were off duty as a crew? Did you socialise together or where did you go from the station off duty?
AK: Yes. Not a lot but [pause] but Alan, Alan came home with me on leave and we went, we were invited to go to [pause], oh dear. The Wall’s Ice Cream people. Office in Acton where they make ice cream. Pork pies and things like that. Oh dear. My father was aid to the chief executive and we had been invited for a tour to see all the pigs coming in one end and the pies coming out the other sort of thing which is quite an experience to see a big pig being tossed around up in a [pause], and having all the hair come off and cleaned up and you know. I remember I’ve got a vision of that thing happening. Oh dear. At this, at my age this happens to me sometimes. A name won’t come up. It will later on when I’m not thinking about it. So that was, you know, that was one way we socialised and Alan and I were so good friends he actually named his son Tony. Anthony. Yeah. Sammy. Yeah we used to go out. Both of us liked going to ballrooms. Wherever we went we went to the local ballrooms of course. That’s where you met the girls in those days and Sammy and I would go to ballrooms wherever we were. Very much so. Yeah. We were mid-way between Kings Lynn and Cambridge and most of the time if I was on my own I went up to Kings Lynn. Met some, met somebody very nice there who used to be a chauffeur to a bigwig and she turned up at the squadron in this car which was quite sensational [laughs] for us to go off to a dance or something like that. She was very nice. And very strange coincidence when I was at Maripur Airport at Karachi I learned to drive at night on a lorry and the fellow who taught me we started talking and I’m talking about Kings Lynn and I said I said had a very nice partner there. Dot. He said, ‘I know Dot. I know Dot. I know who you’re talking about. ’ Yeah. Amazing.
NM: Great. So were you, were you all commissioned as air crew?
AK: Yes. I was commissioned. Yes.
NM: But the rest of the —
AK: Early on in the squadron. Yeah.
NM: Right. And what about the rest of the crew? Were they all commissioned?
AK: Alan of course was. No. The others. Oh yes — Sammy. Sammy. He also was, the wireless operator, he was commissioned too. The gunners were not.
NM: Right. So on the squadron.
AK: And the engineer.
NM: You had, you were in separate messes and accommodation.
AK: Yes.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Yeah.
[pause]
NM: So of the thirty operations, thirty three operations that you flew, which were the most memorable?
AK: The last one. The one where I had to ask permission to fly across London where we had to divert right across country to St Mawgan’s and ran out of petrol. That was, that’s fairly memorable that one. There was one where we were under the guidance of the master pilot up top and then the bomb aimer was running this one and flares had been dropped by the bloke upstairs and he was saying, ‘I want, right, down the side of the yellow flares. Down the side of the red flares,’ and we were working on the [assumption?] they were dropping and flattening this particular town, or small town which was being used as a maintenance base by the Germans and looking back at that was just a massive circle of flame when we left it. I can still see that one. Yeah. There were pictures of the damage. Mainly, we were mainly, most of them were in the bomb, in the Ruhr area. And you know picture the Ruhr at that time. There wasn’t a roof on anything with the photographs we saw of our targets. Absolutely frightening for them. You knew you were killing civilians but you were also trying to block railroad junctions and ball bearing factories and things like that. We always had a particular target. We were told it was this, that or the other but the last one was as I say very memorable. Most of them as far as I was concerned were sort of routine. We, we got pierced with flak now and again but remember I had my head down working like mad. Only, I could only look out in the daylight at any one point in time to see what was going and as I say it was quite disturbing when you was doing a run up, run up on the target to see the air full of, full of smoke puffs where the exploding anti-aircraft but even that towards the end became less and less. They just hadn’t got the equipment any more. Yeah. But mostly it was, as far as I was concerned just routine, head down and get on with it.
NM: So what happened to the crew at the end of your tour?
AK: Well, Alan of course went back to Adelaide. He was an architect. He built his own home, beautiful home at the back of Adelaide so when you sat in his dining room at night you looked down right across Adelaide and out to the sea. It was lovely. Sammy. His bank manager told him, ‘Sammy. Buy leather’ And of course he came from the Leicester area so Sammy did and he started off with two small operatives making uppers with the leather that he acquired and then went on. He finished up with a factory and making an awful lot of money. Lovely home. Had his own — he had two cars. The very flash one which he didn’t use to go in to work. He had an old, oldish car to go in to work so he didn’t upset his workers. And as I say he had his own horse. But again he died. He died of cancer and we went up for his funeral and his wife had had an oil painting done of Sammy and he was sitting in an arm chair, hand over one side. What was in it? A cigarette. Alan went the same way but I didn’t see him in his last year or two. I hadn’t gone out to. He said, ‘Tony, I’m going to beat this.’ I said, ‘I’m sure you are Alan. ’ But he didn’t. He didn’t beat it and that was ten, fifteen years ago. Both of them. I count myself lucky. I really do. I count myself lucky in every way.
NM: So you went into Transport Command at the end of your —
AK: Yeah.
NM: End of your tour. As a navigator?
AK: No. I was offered it. I applied to BOAC and BEA. BOAC offered me a position as a navigator but I decided there wasn’t a great future. I was offered a five year extension of commission in the RAF but I turned that down. I thought what am I going to do at the end of five years? Everybody else would have got established. So I turned that down. I turned down the BOAC offer because I was pretty sure that with modern developments navigators weren’t going to be required for very long. I think that was, that’s how it turned out. So I went into BEA line and I started work in [pause] at Northolt Airport in the [load?] control office. I answered a vacancy and went up to BEA Line House. Their head office. And into their planning department there. And then of course when we merged and went to Heathrow at a big office there again I applied. I applied for the Manage, Manager Australia became available. Advertised. My brother was in Australia. Alan was in Australia. My father was in New Zealand having remarried a New Zealand lady. I thought I wouldn’t mind that job but I was warned that it was already fixed and so it proved but I gave and I know, although I say it, I did give a very good interview. So much so that they offered me a senior manager’s position as a result of my having applied for Manager Australia. I was given a senior planning. I was called Planning Product Manager for South and East Europe. And that was quite a nice job because that meant I was liaising and negotiating with all the, let’s say, starting from the Netherlands. The Dutch, the Belgian, the French, the Portuguese, Gibraltar Airways. Italian, Greek, Turkish, Maltese, Cyprus and Israel. They were my, if you like, that was my group and I had a team of blokes working with me. Obviously I didn’t, but I did a lot of travelling meeting these airlines. We used to meet once before each season. Just sit down and decide what we thought the traffic was going to be. How much it would grow. And then we would share the capacity between us. We would have a partnership. What they called a pool partnership. So that meant I had a lot of contacts in airlines and if I wanted flight tickets for so and so no problem at all. Just rang up. Equally they wanted it back again but that was a nice liaison and we got on well and it was a very interesting job as you can imagine. Sort of having all, having all those contacts and travelling in some very nice countries. I left. I actually took an early retirement because my wife Jean had contracted MS and at the time they were downsizing and Roy Watts, who was Chief Executive, I had worked directly for Roy Watts at one time and I sent a message out to him saying, ‘If you could give me as good a deal for the people you don’t want I’d like to go,’ and I got away. I came out with a handshake, a good pension and for two years I applied for, I signed on and got the dole for two years. Everybody did. Pilots used to turn up in their blooming great cars to collect their dole money. [laughs] They dropped that but so that I never looked back. I think that was the best thing I ever did was take early retirement. I was fifty seven when I retired. I’d been with them thirty three years and I’ve been retired thirty four.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Thirty four coming up thirty five. Yeah. As I say I count myself very very lucky. The twists and turns of my life. Getting out from my student apprenticeship to go in to the air force. Surviving the air force and getting into Transport Command. All the twists and turns of my life which proved to be very lucky for me. And I mean the worse things that’s happened to me is I had to have a pacemaker because I blacked out a couple of times. I think if I’d blacked out a third time I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.
NM: Ok.
AK: But a section of my heart wasn’t working properly so and that’s been fine. Margaret has proved a very good friend and companion. Yeah. We’re partners at Bridge and long walks and visits aren’t we Margaret? We do things together a lot.
MS: He’s amazing. He goes to the gym. His neighbour says he’s mental. He goes over to the gym, Ruislip gym, two or three times a week. On all the machines. I tell you. He’s amazing. He goes walking across the fields to the coffee place in Ruislip, and stuff.
AK: Well it is the safest way to exercise.
MS: Just amazing.
NM: Keeping active. Good. Good.
AK: I still say I’m lucky.
NM: Yeah.
AK: But er I’ve got two very nice daughters who take, ring up and keep contact. Nice contact. They’re happily married and I’m very happy about that. First marriage for one of them wasn’t so good but from that two nice grandsons but she’s remarried now and very happy too. So that’s nice. To know that they’re ok and doing well. And I want to stay here as long as I can because I can cope on my own. It’s very, it’s not the way I would have liked it but Jean because she had MS lost control of things and I’ve had a lift. This house had to be absolutely suitable for having a lift installed and if you went in to this house you wouldn’t know there was a lift. It’s in the corner. An L shaped kitchen and it’s in the far corner and the carers could wheel Jean in and take her up. Bring her down again. Now that occasionally has proved very useful to me. A — I never carry heavy things up and down stairs. The lift does that for me and I had a knee operation a year or two ago. Again the lift got me up and down. So I’m not moving. This has got, this has got the right sort of facilities for me. No.
NM: Do you keep in touch with the RAF at all through Associations or reunions?
AK: No. No. I’m not a bloke for doing that sort of thing. I didn’t apply for my medals at all until my daughters said, ‘Dad we’d like them.’ And the reason I hadn’t is I was so cheesed off with the attitude towards the air force. There was no Air Force Bomber Command medal. And also they seemed ashamed of the air force. They shouldn’t have been ashamed of the people who had carried out their orders. If you had to be ashamed of anybody it was the people who picked the targets that caused the feeling. I think the politicians were ashamed and they didn’t want to make a fuss of the air force. Anyway, in the end I did send for my medals. They’re in boxes upstairs. And then I applied again when they finally did something for Bomber Command and now I’ve got a metal strip across my medals saying Bomber Command but as I say they’re all in boxes upstairs. I’m not a bloke for walking around with medals and going on marches and that kind of thing. Celebration. So I’ve not kept in touch at all.
NM: So when, when you look back in your time in Bomber Command what are your, what are your main reflections as you look back on your time in Bomber Command?
AK: Well [pause] it is as I said just now it is each twist and turn unplanned. I hadn’t a — when I left initially when I was sixteen I hadn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do until this chance came up. I saw this, you know application for student entry apprentice and I sat for it and passed. And I say from that it so happened I started on the day after war started and the apprenticeship tuition was not developing the way I wanted, that suited me at all. So I got out. One twist of my life. Well second twist because I went for this. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what I wanted to do. I thought well I might as well go on and see how I do. Then there’s the twist of having had enough of that. Not wanting to be behind a draughting board, drawing board the rest of my life. Getting out of the air force. Possibly not being a pilot but a navigator might well have saved my life. I spent a year out in South Africa. Very pleasant. Came back and crewed up and got away with what I’d been telling you, telling you about. The life there. And then the twist at the end of it of deciding that there’s got to be a future in civil aviation so applying for Transport Command. From there I was in to British European Airways before my demob leave had finished ‘cause they were recruiting heavily at the time and because of my experience of running a unit out in Maripur that got me straight in. And that was my career for the rest of my life. So, you know, twists and turns. I keep saying to myself and anybody who asks I have been very lucky.
MS: One thing you haven’t yet confessed is what you didn’t confess when you first applied to the RAF which you told me about which was that as a child you suffered very badly from any sort of travel sickness to the extent that you were sick if you went on a bus and, and really really suffered and that when you applied to the RAF you did not mention, you weren’t asked about it and so you didn’t mention it and as you’ve told me you were always sick on every flight. It became routine.
AK: Nearly every flight. Nearly every flight I was airsick. Sometimes during the flight but more often than not when we were coming in to land. The aircraft was getting warmer. It was under manual control now instead of George. And very often I would be airsick before we touched down and the ground crew made comments about this when we took them all out to dinner at the end of our tour. We took them all out for a meal and a thank you and they passed remark about somebody always leaving, leaving a bag for them to clear out of the aircraft. But fortunately I was young and fit enough that I could be sick and get back and carry on working but had the aircraft er had the air force known I suffered from air sickness I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have made it. Yeah.
NM: So what did the rest of the crew —?
AK: I’m still suffering from travel sickness even now. It wasn’t long. I can’t stand coaches and I have been, I have been sick quite recently on a coach. It still, still bothers me a little. I mean, I can drive all over the place and not be ill and if I’m in the front seat of a car no problem as a passenger but coaches, buses, and the Tube sometimes. The stop start of the Tube it it’s a bit jerky during the journey and a long journey. We went up to town recently on the Piccadilly Line. When I came home, when I came back I was headachy and really feeling a bit sick but I wasn’t but I get very hot, starting to sweat and I know that’s a sure sign that if I don’t get off the bus or whatever I’m going to be ill. Yeah. But it didn’t affect my ability as a navigator. Fortunately, as I say, I could be ill and just get straight back and carry on working.
NM: And the rest of the crew were fine when they realised they had an air sick navigator were they?
AK: Pardon?
NM: The rest of your crew were fine with you when they realised they’ got an air sick navigator. Were they?
AK: It was too late then. We were all crewed up. But it didn’t bother them at all. No. They weren’t bothered. It was the ground crew that were bothered. They had to. It was always in a bag.
NM: Yeah.
AK: I mean they never had to clean the aircraft from that point of view so it was alright. I always made sure I always had a bag with me so I could be ok from that point of view. Yeah. But as a child I couldn’t go two stations on the tube. Dreadful. My father told me it was all in the mind but it actually it wasn’t all in the mind [laughs]. Far from it. I don’t know what. I can’t think of anything in particular. Margaret. I talked a lot to Margaret about it and she made a lot of notes. I don’t think there’s really anything that I haven’t mentioned.
MS: I just find it really interesting reading the logbook. Every detail. Exactly how many bombs. What weight on ever mission. Very detailed.
AK: Yes I’ve always recorded the bomb load. Yeah. Have you seen one of these?
NM: Yeah. I’ve seen one. But I’d love to look at yours at some point.
AK: Yeah. I did that for my own interest. I think the biggest bomb we carried was a four hundred towards the end. Oh yeah here’s one. When we went to Homberg. One four thousand and fourteen five hundreds. So that was a fair load. That, the, I think yeah we carried a four thousand. Both times to Homberg. We bombed that two days running. I don’t know what we were after on that one. Can’t remember.
MS: I found it interesting when Tony was explaining what “gardening” meant and “vegetables” and things like that but there’s one reference. A few references to something. What was it ASR.
AK: Oh yes.
MS: And you couldn’t remember what it was and we looked it up online and it was Air Supply Research and that was in the Stirlings over the North Sea.
AK: But that would be one of the drops.
MS: Right. But I think at that time they were looking to find ways of dropping equipment and possibly agents and so on and it was, there was a lot of practices over the North Sea.
NM: Ok.
AK: Funnily enough the last three trips we did were all with one four thousand and fourteen five hundreds. They were — the last one was Osterfeld on that section there. Oh no. No. We did a lot more. A lot more using four thousand. I hadn’t realised how many times. [pause] Yeah. Six one thousands, six five hundreds, four two fifties. Where was that too? [Warwinkle?] wherever that is. Same load to Cologne. One four thousand, six one thousands Bonn. Yeah. It was all, most, the majority was around the Ruhr by daylight.
NM: By daylight. That’s where your Gee could work best isn’t it?
AK: GH. Yeah.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Yeah.
NM: What was the first? What was the longest raid? The furthest east you got. Did you get beyond Gee range?
AK: That long one. I can’t remember.
MS: Was it Leipzig?
AK: I think I would most certainly would have had it. Just let’s have a look at that. Merzenberg which is brackets Leipzig.
[pause]
NM: That’s a long way east isn’t it?
AK: I’m trying to see when I had GH come in? I think I had GH by then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I had GH then. I’m sure that would be ok.
NM: Yeah. Ok. Thank you very much.
AK: Ok. Well I hope it’s of interest.
NM: Absolutely.
AK: Nothing in particular, you know. Not like the bombing — bombing dams and things like that but it was still dodgy at times.
NM: Absolutely.
AK: You just got on with it though. We were all daft and stupid [laughs] It was never going to happen to us sort of thing and you just got on with it. It was sickening in the way as I say I lost, lost two pals. Yeah. But that was life.
NM: Well I appreciate you talking to us this way. It’s been very helpful.
AK: Yeah.
NM: So the interview will get transcribed.
AK: Yeah. I’m sure.
NM: And it will —
AK: Edit that down.
NM: And it will, it will go in to the digital archives of the —
AK: Go to?
NM: The digital archives of the Centre that’s being built now in Lincoln now. It’s being opened later this year in fact.
AK: Oh yeah.
NM: In fact there was an opening of the, there’s a Spire which is the same height as the length of the Lancaster wing.
AK: Where’s this?
NM: This is up near Lincoln.
AK: Oh yes.
NM: And there is going to be a Commemoration Centre, a museum and an Education Centre.
AK: Yeah. Yeah, I’m a bit chuffed about that. I mean to commemorate the Lincoln squadrons. What about the others?
NM: But this is for the whole of Bomber Command.
AK: Norfolk and area.
NM: This is going to be for the whole of Bomber Command. So it happens to be in Lincoln because Lincolnshire obviously —
AK: I thought it was just a Lincoln memorial.
NM: It started off I think as a Lincoln memorial but it’s now, it’s now called the International Bomber Command Centre.
AK: Oh. Hooray for that.
NM: And the Memorial Walls have got the names of all fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three names of those that were killed in Bomber Command.
AK: Oh so I shall see my friend’s name up there.
NM: Your friend will be there. That’s right. And the Spire was opened.
AK: Oh I didn’t know that. That’s news. I was really cheesed off when they talked about a memorial for Lincoln. What about us?
NM: Yeah. That was a hundred and twenty five thousand in total wasn’t there all the way from Yorkshire through to where you are? I’ve got a leaflet which I can give you about the Centre.
AK: Sorry?
NM: I’ve got a leaflet I can give you about the Centre.
AK: Oh can you. Oh great.
NM: Ok.
AK: Of course it wasn’t long ago that we had that memorial up in Regent’s Park.
NM: Green.
MS: Green Park.
NM: Green Park.
AK: Yeah. I have seen it and I think it’s good. Great. But it took a long time to come didn’t it?
NM: It did. That’s right. I have seen it too. It’s —
AK: I’m still not, I’m still not wearing my medals.
NM: Fair enough. Absolutely.
AK: The girls can have those.
NM: But when the Centre’s opened later this year you might be able to find the opportunity to go and have a look.
AK: Yes. Well we’re going up that way, or planning to aren’t we? Possibly when your brother comes over.
MS: Yeah.
AK: That way. Going north.
MS: Yeah but I don’t think that will be via this.
NM: Yeah.
MS: And it’s later in the year. You reckon maybe the autumn or —
NM: Something like that I think. I’m not quite sure of the date myself but yeah. It’s being built as we speak.
MS: Really.
NM: Yeah. Yeah. The Spire was opened last October and there was a big event and veterans were invited back and this tall Spire was opened.
MS: Oh really.
NM: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MS: Wow.
NM: So now you’re on their database. They know about you now and they will get this.
AK: Oh God.
NM: They will get this recording.
AK: Will I see any of this? Will I have a copy of anything?
NM: If you want a copy of the interview then absolutely they will make one available to you.
AK: Ok.
NM: Would you like that?
AK: Yeah. But the whole thing will come out what? As a book?
NM: The. Well no this is going in to the digital archives of the museum.
AK: Oh I see.
NM: So people when they go to this museum.
AK: Yeah.
NM: And the Education Centre and for research as well if they come across the story of 149 squadron - Tony Kent. They may be able to then listen through headphones.
AK: Oh. I see.
NM: To some of the interview we have just conducted.
AK: Right.
NM: Hear your story directly. And you’re entitled to a copy of this on a disc so if you or Margaret.
MS: I think Tony’s daughter’s would be really —
NM: Daughters.
MS: Really thrilled to have a, they’ve been on at him for quite a while to sort of try and extract information from him [laughs]
NM: So this is, this is ideal.
MS: I think they will be really really happy with that.
NM: Ideal. Yeah. Ok. So once again thank you very much. Much appreciated.
AK: Pleasure. Well I hope it was good enough for you.
NM: It, well I can tell you it absolutely was. Fascinating to listen to. Thank you very much.
[Recording paused]
AK: Hanging down out of the aircraft and Alan coming home he would get right down very low until Sammy couldn’t carry on with his wireless. All of a sudden it went blank and what he’d done he’d flown down so close to the sea that the aerial had gone in to the sea. That was one trick he had. But another one was very naughty actually. He was flying low and he went over the hedges just, and over the top of a Flying Fortress as the crew were getting on it and they were, two or three of them threw themselves off the wing as he came over the edge of the airfield and there was this. How he didn’t get done for that I really don’t know because actually they could have broken their legs, back or anything, jumping off the wing but they did. They just jumped as this Lanc came over the hedges of their property. Don’t know if it was Lakenheath but it was coming in from the coast at low level. Yeah. When we finished our tour and came back from St Mawgan again Alan did his low level run across the airfield with Sammy the wireless operator firing off verey cartridges on the way and, ‘A trifle over the top old man,’ [laughs] came from the control. But when I told you that I had that snowing effect on GH screen. When we landed the senior bloke in the maintenance bay he said, ‘That was pretty good,’ he said, ‘But did you realise that your starboard inner was not firing properly?’ And I think that was causing trouble.
NM: Oh.
AK: That it wasn’t firing cleanly and that’s why I was getting snow effect.
NM: Interference.
AK: But when we got up in the air it settled down. But he could tell that one engine wasn’t, wasn’t running quite true. Yeah. But that was what caused me to think there was a fault in the GH set but it wasn’t. Fortunately as I say when we got into the air it cleared but we got permission to fly across London. Probably the only Lanc that’s ever flown across the middle of London. But it was ok. We joined up with the gaggle. Night time gaggle was murder really. In a way. I’m quite sure that we lost a few aircraft because you’re not flying in formation. You’re flying along a track. You and a, you and a few dozen other aircraft. And our wing commander came back with a five hundred pound through his tail. And I’m quite sure that one or two aircraft must have been hit and blown out doing that ‘cause you just did not know. The only way you knew you were anywhere near aircraft was when you got a bump from the slipstream of the aircraft ahead of you.
NM: Yeah.
AK: Because there were no lights on at all. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the cleverest way to go but it was probably the safest to go but no lights on but you just didn’t know who was around you. Where they were. When you were running over the target dropping your bombs and there might have been somebody just about a hundred feet above you also doing the same thing. And I’m quite sure it happened. I’m sure it happened. Well as I say if the wing commander can come back. You see if I can come back with a five hundred pounder what else is happening? You know. That was a bit dodgy.
NM: So did Alan always come back low level?
AK: As often as he — yeah. Very often. Not always but he did like his low level flying. Yeah. And he loved to upset Sammy with getting the aerial going into the sea. Yeah. He liked his low level. But that was very naughty going across an airfield. I don’t think Alan realised he was going across an airfield until he went over the hedge kind of thing and there they were all gearing up to go on a, on a raid. He was very very lucky I think. He could, he could have been in serious trouble.
NM: Can I just take a look at the logbook please? Can I look at the logbook?
AK: Yeah. Sure.
NM: Lovely. Thank you. Because another thing the Centre would like to do if you’re willing is if I can put down on the list that you have this, you have this logbook.
AK: Yes.
NM: And they will arrange for it to be scanned and digitised to go part, as part of the content of the centre. If you’re agreeable to that.
AK: You want to take it away.
NM: No. No. No. No.
AK: Oh.
NM: I won’t take it away. What I’ll do is I’ll let them know that you’ve got the logbook and then if you’re happy they will contact you.
AK: No reason why not.
NM: Someone will come and scan it. They have scanning to quite a high standard.
MS: Do they?
NM: They have people to do this and they trained people to do this.
MS: Oh really. It’s so different now isn’t it with the museums. Everything being digitised. I mean you know like fifty years ago that particular log book would have probably been on display.
NM: Yes. Behind a glass case.
MS: And now you’re saying, so what they’re saying Tony they scan it. Like photograph the whole thing and you will retain the logbook but they will have this, this record which is sort of in digital form.
NM: Correct.
MS: Presumably on screen in the museum. Would it be, Nigel? So you can look at the logbook on screen.
NM: I assume. Absolutely.
MS: Yeah.
NM: Yeah. It will be online.
MS: It will be on screen. Like on a computer thing.
AK: Well they won’t screen everything because training’s not very interesting. Only the ops.
NM: No. No. They will scan.
AK: Scan the whole thing.
NM: The whole thing because they’re looking at the total story around Bomber Command. The people, the training, the aircraft, the operations, people’s story, people who are affected by the bombing as well as those who took part in it. Ground crew. All the, all the, so it’s, and I’ve got the leaflet here. I can —
AK: When we were going out to South Africa we went out from Greenock in convoys but the sea was so rough and we had to go so slow because we had to. The convoy went as fast as the slowest ship. Propellers were coming out of the water.
NM: It was that rough.
AK: It was. I didn’t get off my back. As a travel, somebody who couldn’t travel well.
NM: Oh dear.
AK: I did not get off my back. We were down on hammocks. You know, deep in the blasted ship and I just didn’t eat or move for about three days. I was very ill.
MS: Bay of Biscay is notorious anyway.
AK: I got my sea legs eventually and enjoyed the sunshine on the way down. Down to, well we went to Cape Town. Well we went to Freetown first. Gibraltar, Freetown, Cape Town. That was the run.
MS: Freetown. My dad was based in Freetown. He was in West Africa quite a lot I remember and Freetown was one of the places and then there was Liberia.
AK: For all I was seasick.
MS: And a lot of that stuff.
AK: And you can be so sick that in the end it hurts and it hurts like hell if you have to go on too long. When we, when we went into Gibraltar they came out and turned into the Mediterranean at night. Waited till night, turned and then came out and down the Atlantic to Cape Town.
MS: To look as if it was crossing into the Mediterranean and then came out.
AK: Yeah. So people watching from the shore would think that we’d gone into the Mediterranean and then with everything, all the lights turned off etcetera they turned around and went out and down to Freetown. All trying to deceive.
NM: Yeah.
AK: There was a time when the destroyers who were escorting us they were letting off depth charges way out on our starboard side at one time but we didn’t have any, didn’t strike any trouble. But as I say I got my sea legs. That’s where I started playing Bridge. They let us sit up on deck stripped to the waist in the tropical sunshine. No wonder my skin suffered a bit. Definitely overcooked.
MS: ‘Cause there were so many American bases weren’t there in was it Norfolk, Suffolk or East Anglia?
AK: Well Lakenheath was the big one. Lakenheath was the big one.
MS: Was it? Right.
AK: That wasn’t very far from us.
MS: Because Nigel you were Bushey. Lincoln’s Field in Bushey, that was, wasn’t that where they organised the Berlin Airlift from?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Anthony William Kent
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AKentAW170202, PKentAW1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:18:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
South Africa
England--Norfolk
South Africa--Cape Town
Description
An account of the resource
Anthony Kent was born in Wood Green, London, and his family settled in Eltham. Tony started an apprenticeship with Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, at the start of the war and worked as an apprentice draughtsman for eighteen months before volunteering for the RAF. After initial training, he sailed to South Africa to train as a navigator. He completed his training at RAF Stradishall, initially flying Wellingtons, then Stirlings, before joining 149 Squadron at RAF Feltwell where his first operation was mine laying at the Bay of Biscay. After his third mine laying operation, they converted to Lancasters at RAF Methwold. Tony recalls returning to the station after an operation and a bomb dropping to the ground when the doors opened, as it had frozen in place, causing the ground crew to dive to the floor. He describes the nearest they came to ‘not making it’ when a Polish aircraft collided with the tailplane during a training exercise. They landed safely but the Polish aircraft crashed. He describes the use of Gee and Gee-H, and the perils of bombing while aircraft above dropped bombs at the same time. On his last operation, the aircraft was late leaving due to a fault, so Tony requested permission to fly across London and catch up with the bomber stream. This was granted and he believes it was the only Lancaster permitted to do so. As they returned, they were diverted to RAF St Mawgan and as the aircraft reached the end of the runway, all four engines stopped because they had run out of fuel. After completing thirty operations (mostly during daylight) he was transferred to Transport Command, and after the war worked for British European Airways.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
149 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
mid-air collision
mine laying
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Methwold
RAF Stradishall
Stirling
training
Wellington